15 movies we can't wait to see at TIFF 2023

When the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival opens this Thursday, the festival will look a whole lot different than usual. The Hollywood strikes will prevent the big-name stars from beautifying King Street this year, but we still have the movies — more than 200 of them, in fact — stories that will dazzle audiences around the city between Sept. 7 and 17.

Which films are getting the most buzz? Here's what the folks at CBC Arts are dying to see. 

Next Goal Wins

TIFF made news this summer when it revealed Next Goal Wins would be coming to the festival. The movie's journey to theatres has been drawn out for years, dogged by a series of delays that began with a one-two punch of Hollywood disasters: COVID-19 and Armie Hammer.  But hey, who doesn't love an underdog story? 

After clearing the hurdles of recasting, reshoots and release-date shuffling, Next Goal Wins will finally see its world premiere at TIFF before opening in theatres this November. It's the latest from writer-director Taika Waititi, who was last in Toronto for Jojo Rabbit (2019) — winner of the people's choice award that year. Like that movie — and absolutely everything in Waititi's filmography — this one promises to be a heartwarming tale, told with a twisted but tender sense of humour. 

Based on the 2014 documentary of the same name, a feature with an astonishing perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes, Next Goal Wins is the story of the American Samoan soccer team. They're bad (zero lifetime goals bad). But they're determined to make the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and helping them train is a new manager, Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender), a Dutch American veteran of the game. 

At this point, the plot sounds like a copy-paste job from the Hollywood playbook, with all the problematic archetypes that go with it, but based on the trailer, this isn't some "white saviour" narrative. Rongen's no hero; he's more like a "little lost white kid at the mall." And as that line would suggest, Waititi's comedic POV is as strong as ever. The writer-director also appears in the film (he plays a local priest), and the cast is stacked with familiar faces from his past projects. Among them: Oscar Kightley (Hunt for the Wilderpeople), Rhys Darby (What We Do in the Shadows); Rachel House (Thor: Ragnarok) and Eric Fane (Eagle vs. Shark). – Leah Collins (senior writer, CBC Arts)

Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe

Few TV shows, Canadian or otherwise, are as beloved as Mr. Dressup, the cozy daytime kids' program that aired on CBC from 1967 to 1996. Its influence spans generations, and basically, if you remember a world before smartphones, you grew up making daily visits to the treehouse. 

The life and times of Ernie Coombs, the show's star and creator, is the subject of this feature doc, which makes its world premiere at TIFF before landing on Amazon Prime. (A CBC broadcast date is in the works as well.) And to tell the tale, filmmaker Robert McCallum has pulled two undisputed icons out of retirement — none other than Casey and Finnegan (plus their puppeteer, Judith Lawrence). But they're not the only stars on deck! A bunch of Canadian-raised notables turn up, united by their nostalgia for the Tickle Trunk. Among them: Michael J. Fox, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Eric McCormack and Kids in the Hall's Bruce McCulloch and Scott Thompson. 

There's something about a Mr. Dressup movie that suggests a Canadian complement to the hit Mister Rogers doc, 2018's Won't You Be My Neighbor, and indeed, TIFF programmer Norm Wilner describes The Magic of Make-Believe as a story "about the importance of raising children with kindness," an ethos Coombs shared with his PBS counterpart Fred Rogers. (The two famously worked together at CBC in the early '60s.) But pure nostalgia is likely the big draw for any viewer over 30. This one had me at Mr. Dressup. – Leah Collins (senior writer, CBC Arts)

Dream Scenario

What if Nicolas Cage were absolutely everywhere? There are times, I guess, when it definitely seems like he is. The year's not even over, and Cage has appeared in five movies so far, from Renfield to The Flash. Dream Scenario, his sixth IMDb credit of 2023, arrives in theatres this November after a world premiere at TIFF, and the story's been billed as a "comedic reversal of Nightmare on Elm Street," where Cage, in the role of an ordinary college prof, becomes an overnight celebrity through a mysterious (and sinister?) turn of events. Like some real-life version of the "This Man" meme, Cage is suddenly appearing in everyone's dreams — sometimes friendly, sometimes menacing. 

That odd premise is enough to intrigue me, but the project's A24 pedigree is guaranteed to throw film nerds into a Cage-style frenzy of excitement. The studio produced Everything Everywhere All at Once, which swept the Oscars in March, and among Dream Scenario's producers is Ari Aster, the auteur behind three of A24's most surreal and discomfiting titles: Hereditary, Midsommar and Beau is Afraid. Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli is the writer-director of this one, though, and his last feature, 2022's Sick of Myself, tangled with ideas that sound a lot like Dream Scenario's subject matter: the dark side of fame and influencer culture. Oh, and then there's the cast! Michael Cera, Julianne Nicholson and Tim Meadows co-star. – Leah Collins (senior writer, CBC Arts)

Hate to Love: Nickelback

For more than a decade, Nickelback was an absolute punchline of a band. And let me be clear: I was absolutely one of the people who hated on Nickelback. Right from the jump, or at least from the first time I heard Silver Side Up, I was very firmly on the side of "This band SUCKS!"

But like, why? Why did I outright loathe them? Was it because they were corny? In the early '00s, I was listening to Fischerspooner and the High & Mighty, both of which — if we're being honest with ourselves — were kind of corny. Is it because Nickelback was bombastic and over the top? I liked The Darkness. Is it because some of their lyrics were what we'd now call "problematic"? In late 2004 and early 2005, the only two CDs in my car were by Crime Mob and Death from Above 1979. Crime Mob has a line where they compare themselves to Hitler, and they mean it as a good thing. As for DFA79, Google the lyrics to "Dead Womb" right now — I dare you. Nickelback has never said anything that even comes close to that.

So what was it, really? Were the cultural signifiers all wrong? Was it that they unapologetically wanted to be popular? Was it the total lack of ironic detachment? Was it an "It's not the band I hate — it's their fans" kind of situation? Because if I'm being objective, there's nothing wrong with Nickelback. In fact, I'd go so far as to say they have some big tunes. "How You Remind Me" legitimately goes hard. "Rock Star" has a great anthemic chorus and some genuinely hilarious lines.

It seems as if a lot of people are having a "reconsidering Nickelback" moment. "Were we unnecessarily hard on these guys?" is a zeitgeisty question about the group. And now there's a whole documentary about how and why they got to be so perpetually disrespected, and I definitely need to see it, if only to understand my own Nickelback-related thought processes better. – Chris Dart (web writer, CBC Arts)

Dumb Money

Living through the news cycle-amplified turmoil of the last decade, give or take, it's easy to forget about the meme-stock mania that took place a little over two years ago. Most of the world was still pretty locked down back then. Those of us who'd managed to retain our jobs had amassed some savings, and our neighbours to the south had received their stimulus cheques. We needed something to do — and some level of control over our futures — so a whole bunch of us decided to go on r/wallstreetbets and learn how to day trade.

Somewhere in there, meme stocks — stocks that experience explosive share price growth because of social media hype — became a thing. These meme stocks were often for brands that held nostalgic value for millennials — brands that institutional investors bet against: Nokia, AMC, Bed Bath & Beyond and the meme-iest one of them all, GameStop. (By the way, if you bought GameStop in October of 2020, you would be looking at a 1,200 per cent return right now. If on the other hand, you were like me and bought it at its peak, well, what are you gonna do?) 

Dumb Money is the story of how GameStop became a flashpoint for economic populism, a kind of "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore" moment for small-time retail investors. Expect to hear the phrase "diamond hands" a lot. Also, it features Pete Davidson, Seth Rogen and America Ferrera — actors whom I will watch in just about anything. – Chris Dart (web writer, CBC Arts)

Lee

Way back in 2015, I read that Kate Winslet would be playing model/artist/photojournalist Lee Miller, and I have been anticipating this film ever since. The story meets Miller in Europe on the precipice of the Second World War. By that point in time, she had already lived multiple lives. She'd been a fashion model, muse and collaborator of surrealist artist Man Ray, and she'd also become an artist and photographer in her own right. But some of her most significant work was yet to come.

In Lee, director Ellen Kuras sets her lens on Miller's years as a war photographer on assignment for Vogue magazine, as she captures some of the most harrowing and powerful photographs of France and Germany during the Second World War. While there have been books, exhibitions and documentaries dedicated to Miller's work, I can't wait to see how Winslet portrays this extraordinary woman's life, alongside a cast that includes Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgård, Marion Cotillard, Andrea Riseborough and Josh O'Connor. – Mercedes Grundy (producer, CBC Arts)

Solo  

This year's festival certainly has no shortage of exciting new Canadian LGBTQ-focused films. From M.H. Murray's I Don't Know Who You Are and D.W. Waterson's Backspot to Fawzia Mirza's The Queen of My Dreams, I fully expect several additions to this country's queer cinema canon from TIFF '23 alone. If I had to pick just one, though, it would be Sophie Dupuis's appropriately titled Solo. 

The Quebec filmmaker's debut feature, Family First (Chien de garde), was Canada's entry for best foreign language film at the 2019 Academy Awards, and in Solo, she presents a character study set in Montreal's iconic drag scene. Théodore Pellerin (who won a Canadian Screen Award for his performance in Family First) and Félix Maritaud (who appeared in French queer classics 120 BPM and Sauvage) star as drag artists who become lovers in a story that promises something we really haven't seen in Canadian cinema for over 40 years: a nuanced window into the lives of drag artists. – Peter Knegt (producer, CBC Arts)

Dicks: The Musical

Kicking off TIFF's Midnight Madness program (on the festival's opening night), Dicks: The Musical has a truly wild variety of things going for it: songs, dancing, robot vacuums, the director of Borat, the film debut of Megan Thee Stallion, the plot of The Parent Trap, Bowen Yang playing God …

Written by comedians Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson, and adapted from their off-Broadway two-man musical, this A24 release reunites the pair as allegedly identical twins who conspire to reunite their divorced and deranged parents (Nathan Lane and Megan Mullally, naturally). A full-blown musical, Dicks is directed by Larry Charles (Borat, Bruno) and the official TIFF program calls it "proudly queer as fuck." I proudly declare it my most anticipated movie of the festival. – Peter Knegt (producer, CBC Arts)

Hit Man

Richard Linklater's latest film promises to be an existential romp of crime and passion — and who better to tackle it than him? The director of some of modern cinema's most classic films (the Before trilogy, Dazed and Confused, Boyhood), Linklater's dramas are known for their sharp yet gentle observations about what it means to be human. And Hit Man should be as insightful as his previous work: TIFF's Robyn Citizen calls the film "one of [Linklater's] most playful explorations of the individual and the way moral philosophy maps onto everyday lives and seemingly small moments."

The plot sounds devilishly fun. Glen Powell stars as Gary Johnson, a philosophy professor who works a side job helping police with undercover sting operations. While in character impersonating a hitman, he meets Madison (Adria Arjona), a prospective client trying to escape an abusive marriage, and begins romancing her while attempting to keep up the act. But as his lies unravel and someone ends up dead for real, the once mild Gary is suddenly the prime suspect in an actual crime. – Eleanor Knowles (producer, CBC Arts)

Hell of a Summer

The feature directorial debut from Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard and Ghostbusters: Afterlife's Billy Bryk, Hell of a Summer might be vying to be gen-Z's official entry in the canon of raunchy summer camp films. As a masked killer descends on Camp Pineway, the teenage counsellors are forced to turn their attention away from their original mission — hooking up — to focus on a much bigger one.

Wolfhard and Bryk are in front of the camera as well as behind it (the co-stars wrote and directed the film) and the pair obviously enjoy collaborating with each other. Bryk starred in the first short film Wolfhard directed (Night Shifts), and they previously acted together in When You Finish Saving the World and the aforementioned Ghostbusters reboot. It'll be interesting to see what the young filmmakers bring to the table with a bigger budget and more ambitious vision. Hopefully it's a hell of a good time. – Eleanor Knowles (producer, CBC Arts)

Seven Veils

In 1996, Atom Egoyan directed the Canadian Opera Company's (COC) production of Salome, the infamous Richard Strauss opera adapted from the Oscar Wilde play. When the biblical princess Salome fails at seducing John the Baptist, she settles for kissing his decapitated head, and the opera climaxes with the "Dance of the Seven Veils," a scene Egoyan dubbed "the most famous striptease in history." Fitting, then, that he directed Salome immediately after making 1994's Exotica, a movie set in a strip club, which, like Salome, dances between trauma and forbidden desire.

With Seven Veils, Egoyan returns to the COC — literally. The TIFF premiere will be hosted in partnership with the COC at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, where the director recently remounted the opera and likely shot material for this movie. The project reunites him with Chloe star Amanda Seyfried (love her!), who plays a theatre director tasked with remounting her mentor's most famous work, Salome, while coping with demons from her past.

Egoyan seems to be revisiting his own history. With Seven Veils, he's making a layered circular journey back to the themes of Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter and Ararat — movies about how we use storytelling to cope with trauma. – Radheyan Simonpillai (contributor, CBC Arts)

NAGA

TIFF programmer Peter Kuplowsky compares this Saudi Arabian thriller to Martin Scorsese's After Hours and the Safdie brothers' Good Time. Say less.

In NAGA, Adwa Bader (one of this year's TIFF Rising Stars) plays a young Saudi girl from a conservative home who sneaks off to the desert for an underground party. The adventure leaves her stranded in a misogynistic environment, fending for herself against an onslaught of threats. It's like the darker and more violently twisted answer to the road trip scene from Barbie.

The film, which is Meshal Aljaser's feature debut, feels as if it's part of the zeitgeist — alongside a wave of #MeToo movies that capture the current anxiety over workplace abuse, the overturning of Roe v. Wade and recent violence against women in Iran. NAGA's TIFF synopsis describes an act of patriarchal violence that haunts the protagonist, a detail that recalls In Flames, an unsettling ghost story from Canadian director Zarrar Khan about a Pakistani girl terrorized by misogyny. That film is also playing at TIFF alongside more movies about women conquering toxic environments (Fair Play, The Royal Hotel). – Radheyan Simonpillai (contributor, CBC Arts)

American Fiction

Percival Everett's novel, Erasure, was published in 2001, just a year after Spike Lee's Bamboozled came out. Both satires were a response to the media commodifying narratives about Black communities that centred on poverty and crime (think gangster rap and New Jack Cinema). Now, more than 20 years later, Everett's novel has been turned into a film: American Fiction.

The project marks the directorial debut of Cord Jefferson (a writer for The Good Place and Watchmen) and stars Jeffrey Wright as English professor Thelonious (Monk) Ellison, an author who is told his writing isn't Black enough. In response, Monk pulls a Bamboozled, writing a novel that peddles every "ghetto" cliché imaginable, only to become a runaway success.

I'm eager to see how Everett's source material speaks to a new era, post-#OscarsSoWhite. So many of the tropes that Erasure chafed at have been replaced with movies and TV produced by and catering to white guilt — stories that verge on being trauma porn. I'm also eager to see how Wright and fellow castmates Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown and Living Single icon Erika Alexander chew through the material. – Radheyan Simonpillai (contributor, CBC Arts)

Aggro Dr1ft

If you're a fan of experimental, transgressive, "out there" films that push the limits of the art form, this one's for you. Director Harmony Korine's latest venture features rapper Travis Scott in the lead role, and if you know anything about these two, it's a match made in weirdo heaven. The plot is said to loosely focus on the violent, nightmarish adventures of a Miami assassin, with an avant-garde structure that blurs the lines between a variety of mediums, including film, TikTok and video games. 

The big headline everyone's talking about, though, is that the project is filmed entirely in infrared: a photographic process that essentially captures thermal energy instead of visible light, resulting in a lurid hallucinogenic image. Skies are dark; skin is multicoloured; trees glow — it's definitely a bold choice. 

For now, it's unclear whether Aggro Dr1ft will be a groundbreaking visual treat or merely a 90-minute headache. (Maybe a bit of both?) If nothing else, it promises an experience like no other. – Tiffany Wice (associate producer, CBC Creator Network)

The Zone of Interest

With his disquieting 2013 sci-fi film Under the Skin, director Jonathan Glazer gained global recognition for his ability to both mesmerize and disturb. His next feature, shot nearly a decade later on location in Poland and Germany, looks to be a worthy followup.

Loosely adapted from the novel of the same name by Martin Amis, Glazer's The Zone of Interest promises a haunting blend of domestic fairy tale and unthinkable horror. Set near the end of the Second World War, the film centres on an Auschwitz officer who lives a stone's throw from the camp along with his wife and children. Their home is beautiful: servants tend to their needs; they spend time together in their lush garden, go fishing in the lake. The family lives their dream life next door to a nightmare.

The film premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, receiving both critical acclaim and the prestigious Grand Prix. While it definitely won't be a joyous crowd-pleaser like Next Goal Wins, with Glazer behind the camera, The Zone of Interest is all but assured to be an achievement in both technical and artistic filmmaking that TIFFgoers won't want to miss. If you are attending a screening, make sure to block out some quiet recovery time, because you're probably going to need it. – Tiffany Wice (associate producer, CBC Creator Network)

Check out our full slate of TIFF 2023 coverage here.