The Toronto International Film Festival has just released its official film schedule ahead of its 51st edition, which runs September 10-20, 2026, in Canada’s largest city and film hub.

While TIFF’s 2026 lineup features many of the usual highly-anticipated suspects –– award-winning festival favorites from earlier in the year, and plenty of star-studded world premieres of its own –– this year marks the inaugural TIFF Market, which runs in conjunction with the festival’s first week, and will feature projects from across the globe aiming to connect with international sales agents and distributors. According to festival CEO Cameron Bailey in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, TIFF: The Market has plans to serve as a North American equivalent to Berlinale’s European Film Market and Cannes’ Marché du Film.

While the brand new market plans will hopefully stimulate those in the film business sector heading to TIFF this year, the festival’s public audiences, which boasted an incredible 700,000 guests in 2025, will have plenty of movies to be excited about, ranging from the festival’s high-profile Gala program to its arthouse-leaning Wavelengths lineup. As per usual, Foremost Film’s coverage for this year’s festival will focus on the latter camp, with the intention to discover exciting new works and filmmakers from all corners of the world. Continue reading to check out 10 titles Foremost Film is looking forward to seeing at the 51st edition of TIFF:

‘A Long Winter’

Directed by: Andrew Haigh

Special Presentations

After crushing hearts far and wide with his 2023 queer ghost story All of Us Strangers, Haigh returns to the scene with A Long Winter, adapted from a short story of the same name by Irish writer Colm Tóibín (who also penned 2015’s TIFF-programmed Brooklyn). Set in the Rocky Mountains during the 1950s, the Alberta-shot drama tracks an isolated family in crisis when their matriarch disappears during a massive snowstorm and stars the likes of Fred Hechinger, Kit Connor, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Caitríona Balfe. A filmmaker known for exploring a wide facet of characterizations and time periods through his intricately penned screenplays, Haigh’s latest could prove to be a major contender in the upcoming awards race after making its Canadian debut in TIFF’s Special Presentations program this year.

‘Ancestors’

Directed by: David Turpin

Discovery

Swoon-worthy Irish actor Éanna Hardwicke stars in Ancestors, a queer mystery in which dreams and reality begin to collide for a young man searching for his friend through the darkest corners of 80s London. The directorial debut from Turpin, best known for his screenwriting credits, Ancestors sounds like it confronts a dark but fascinating period for the LGBTQ+ community in England, a time of great upheaval amidst the AIDS epidemic and Thatcher’s England.

‘Clarissa’

Directed by: Arie & Chuko Esiri

Special Presentations

Clarissa will make its North American debut at TIFF after receiving near-universal acclaim at Cannes following its world premiere earlier this year. The sophomore feature from the Esiri brothers, Clarissa is adapted from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, reconfiguring the novel’s 1920’s London setting to modern-day Lagos. Oscar-nominated British-Nigerian actress Sophie Okonedo stars as the movie’s guiding light Clarissa, whom the narrative follows across a single day as she prepares to host the perfect party, a task that takes her through ruminations of her own memory and missed connections. Thanks to the major hype around this movie, as well as its likely inclusion at many of the fall’s biggest film festivals, Clarissa is primed to be one of the splashiest African titles at this year’s TIFF.

‘Everytime’

Directed by: Sandra Wollner

Centrepiece

Hot off winning the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes a few months ago, Everytime will make its North American bow in TIFF’s Centrepiece program. Prominent Austrian actress Birgit Minichmayr (Everyone Else) stars as a grieving mother who embarks on a holiday with her late daughter’s boyfriend, stirring up a tempest of intense emotions as the two try to cope with their loss. Hailed out of Cannes for its haunting narrative, Everytime seems poised to make lots of noise on the festival circuit after it plays at TIFF: its inclusion in the New York Film Festival’s Main Slate in October feels like a weighty stamp of approval.

‘Masc’

Directed by: Bertil Nilsson

Platform Program

Masc, world-premiering in TIFF’s Platform program, is the debut feature from Nilsson, a London-based filmmaker and photographer. Joshua Griffin (who starred in Nilsson’s 2023 short Repair) holds the movie’s central focus as Robin, a young autistic man struggling to navigate his place in the world and the riddles of contemporary masculinity he feels pressured by. Based on the director’s past work, Masc promises a moody sensuality expressed through striking imagery and nuanced, often lonely central characters. TIFF’s Platform lineup has notably showcased many up-and-coming filmmakers in the past who have gone on to have prominent careers, including Barry Jenkins, Pietro Marcello, and Pablo Larraín.

‘Stuffed’

Directed by: Theo Rhys

Discovery

The opening film of the Discovery program at TIFF 2026, Stuffed sounds in many ways like a wild and wacky amuse bouche for the lineup to follow. Adapted from a 2021 award-winning short film of the same name, Stuffed stars the talented duo of Jodie Comer and Harry Melling in a twisted romance in which a man desires to be taxidermied but ends up falling for the woman set to complete the task in the case of his death. Oh yeah, did I mention that its also a musical? Based on the quality and intrigue of the roles both stars have chosen in recent times, Stuffed promises to be anything but boring.

‘The bovine with the curved horns’

Directed by: Omar E. Ospina Giraldo

Centrepiece

Ospina Giraldo’s feature debut excavates the director’s Colombian heritage, one marked by a blend of beauty and violence due to the country’s tumultuous modern history. While the movie’s details remain under wraps ahead of its premiere next month, an early clip shot in black and white tracks a group of young boys boating down a peaceful river, almost promising a meditative reflection of the filmmaker’s efforts. The bovine with the curved horns will play in TIFF’s Centrepiece program, a section of the festival devoted to showcasing contemporary works of cinema from around the globe.

‘The Diary of a Chambermaid’

Directed by: Radu Jude

Wavelengths

Another book-to-film adaptation entry on this TIFF watchlist is from a rather unexpected filmmaker: Romania’s punk provocateur Jude, who reworks Octave Mirbeau’s 1900 French classic of the same name with his distinctive touch. Shifting the setting to contemporary Bordeaux, where a Romanian housekeeper (Ana Dumitrașcu) has been hired by an affluent bourgeois family, The Diary of a Chambermaid feels like the perfect vessel for Jude to continue the poignant criticisms of contemporary socioeconomics that have defined much of the prolific work over the past few years. The Diary of a Chambermaid was met at Cannes earlier this year, where it premiered in the Director’s Fortnight, with glowing reviews, many of which commented on its surprising compassion compared to Jude’s more confrontational movies.

‘The Face of Horror’

Directed by: Anna Biller

Midnight Madness

With The Face of Horror, Biller returns to the director’s chair for the first time since her last effort, The Love Witch, became an instant cult classic a decade ago. The Face of Horror works as a reimagining of Yotsuya Kaidan, one of Japan’s most iconic ghost stories, transplanting its story of love and betrayal to late-medieval England. Biller’s adaptation stars Jonah Hauer-King (The Little Mermaid) and Kristine Froseth (How to Blow Up a Pipeline), and seems like another prime set-up for the director’s singular explorations of visual style and the female gaze in cinema. The Face of Horror stands out as one of the Midnight Madness lineup’s most-anticipated premieres this TIFF, a section with undoubtedly more eyes on it this year following the tremendous success of 2025’s Midnight Madness Audience Prize winner Obsession.

‘The Hummingbird Paints Fragrant Songs’

Co-directed by: Èlia Gasull Balada & Matteo Norzi

TIFF Docs

World-premiering as part of the TIFF Docs program is the lyrically anointed The Hummingbird Paints Fragrant Songs. The co-directed documentary tracks the career of Indigenous Peruvian painter Sara Flores, whose work, comprised of gorgeous large-scale paintings featuring patterned motifs reflective of her heritage, skyrocketed her to the upper echelons of the art world in her 70s. While many (myself included) may be unfamiliar with Flores’ practice, the TIFF Docs program almost annually offers meaningful chances to learn about new artists, cultures, and perspectives through the language of documentary cinema with great effect.

The 51st Toronto International Film Festival will be held September 10-20, 2026. Visit the festival’s website for more information.

2026 Toronto International Film Festival Preview: 10 Titles to Look Forward To