With the Toronto International Film Festival for 2025 almost upon us, filmgoers are preparing their schedules for all the films, shorts, documentaries, and more to come. To get you ready for TIFF 2025, we’ve put together a list of 10 of the most anticipated films, the ones that are on most people’s “must” list. What are people excited about? What can you expect to get coverage of? We’ve got a list.
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1. Frankenstein
Directed by: Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Christoph Waltz, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Charles Dance, David Bradley, Lars Mikkelsen, and Christian Convery.
Synopsis: Oscar Isaac plays Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant scientist tortured by ambition and his own raging passions. Pushing his work beyond scientific certainty to the boundary between life and death, he brings a new being into existence in a spectacular moment of creation. Played in completely original fashion by Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein’s monster begins as a powerful, dangerous beast but carries the equally dangerous capacity to learn from human behaviour. It puts both Frankenstein and his fiancé Elizabeth (Mia Goth, last at the Festival in 2022’s Pearl) in jeopardy.
Having spent most of his life absorbing and distilling the Frankenstein story and all its lore, del Toro takes liberties with the novel. The result is a singular vision that could only have come from cinema’s master of the monstrous.
2. Sentimental Value
Directed by: Joachim Trier
Starring: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas.
Synopsis: The winner of the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes festival, Sentimental Value portrays the myriad repercussions of a once-great filmmaker’s effort to recapture his past glory. A man who’s always prioritized his work, Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) is long estranged from his daughters Nora (Renate Reinsve), a gifted stage actress, and the more grounded Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), now immersed in family life years after performing in one of her father’s most revered movies. He finds a surprising source of support after a Hollywood star, Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) discovers his films at a festival retrospective. As preparation for Gustav’s new movie begins with Rachel in the role that Nora had rejected, the uniquely personal nature of his script — based on a tragedy that took place in the house that remains central to the Borgs’ lives — draws the family members together again in ways they could not predict.
3. Ballad of a Small Player
Directed by: Edward Berger
Cast: Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Tilda Swinton, Deanie Ip, Alex Jennings.
Synopsis: Brimming with mystery and awash in atmospherics, this seductive character study from Oscar-winning director Edward Berger (Conclave, TIFF ’24) stars Oscar nominee Colin Farrell as a travelling gambler and Oscar winner Tilda Swinton as the dogged detective determined to track him down.
In his green velvet suit and kid gloves, with his pencil moustache and posh accent, Lord Freddy Doyle (Farrell) plays the part of the international high roller, living the lush life at a luxury hotel in Macao. But a closer look suggests Doyle’s situation is more desperate than it appears. He’s behind on his room payments, can’t find a casino that will give him credit, and he’s deep in debt to a dubious local character. Doyle came to Macao because here, as a “foreign ghost” who no one knows, he can reinvent himself. But Cynthia Blithe (Swinton) knows who he really is — and what he’s running from. A sympathetic casino hostess (Fala Chen, also at the Festival in Lucky Lu) may be able to help Doyle escape his mounting problems. But is there anywhere left for him to go?
4. Hamnet
Directed by: Chloé Zhao
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, and Joe Alwyn.
Synopsis: In William Shakespeare’s day, the names Hamlet and Hamnet were interchangeable. The newest film by Chloé Zhao, director of TIFF ’20 People’s Choice Award winner Nomadland, also an Oscar winner, uses that context as the basis for a tender exploration of Shakespeare’s domestic life, connecting a family tragedy to one of his most famous works. Maybe we can better understand Hamlet, Zhao suggests, if we consider that it was developed while the most famous writer in the Western canon was mourning the death of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet.
MORE: 10 LGBTQ+ Films Playing at TIFF 2025
5. Hedda
Directed by: Nia DaCosta
Cast: Tessa Thompson, Nina Hoss, Imogen Poots, Nicholas Pinnock, and Tom Bateman.
Synopsis: Newly wed and precariously dissatisfied with life, Hedda (Thompson), gun-loving daughter of the late General Gabler, has convinced her husband George (Tom Bateman), a timid but ambitious scholar, to throw a lavish party the couple cannot afford. On the teeming guest list is Eileen Lovborg (Hoss), a celebrated author of a book exploring sexuality — and George’s key rival for a coveted academic post. Hedda sees the guests as pawns in an elaborate game she plans to orchestrate with ruthless precision.
6. No Other Choice
Directed by: Park Chan-wook
Cast: Lee Byung Hun, Son Yejin, Park Hee Soon, Lee Sung Min, Yeom Hye Ran, and Cha Seung Won.
Synopsis: Man-soo (Lee) had it all: a loving wife, two talented children, two happy dogs. He even bought the beautiful forest-enclosed house where he grew up. Then, after 25 years of dedicated work for Solar Paper — where he was awarded Pulp Man of the Year in 2019 — Man-soo is suddenly given the axe.
Soon he is falling behind on his mortgage payments and his wife Mi-ri (Son Yejin) insists they put the house up for sale. Man-soo is desperate to scoop a coveted position with Moon Paper, but he knows there are other job seekers who match his pedigree. So he hatches a plan: invent a phony paper company, reach out to each of his rivals, lure them into a meeting… and, one by one, dispatch the competition.
7. Nouvelle Vague
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Cast: Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin, Adrien Rouyard, Antoine Besson and Jodie Ruth-Forest.
Synopsis: Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless heralded the arrival of the French New Wave, revolutionizing the way we make, watch, and think about cinema. The latest from Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater — also at the Festival with Blue Moon — is a love letter to Godard’s legendary 1960 feature debut, meticulously recreating the circumstances of its creation in the youthful spirit of its source material.
Having spent several years writing for Cahiers du cinéma, Godard (Guillaume Marbeck), not yet 30, declares, “The best way to criticize a film is to make one.” So off he goes, convincing George de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfürst) to fund a low-budget independent feature and whipping up a treatment — there was never a proper script — with fellow New Waver François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard) based on a news item about a gangster and his girlfriend.
They cast amateur boxer Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) and American starlet Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch) as leads and assemble a crew that includes former war photographer Raoul Coutard (Matthieu Penchinat). The shoot is chaotic and seemingly amateurish, with the capricious Godard condemning the rules of continuity, coming up with ideas on the fly, taking extended breaks — and ultimately winning over all involved thanks to the bold clarity of his vision.
8. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Directed by: Rian Johnson
Cast: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, Thomas Haden Church.
Synopsis: In 2019, Oscar nominated writer-director Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig revitalized the British drawing room murder mystery with the gleeful, star-laden Knives Out, creating their own version of Agatha Christie’s unflappable detective Hercule Poirot with Craig’s brilliant Southerner, Benoit Blanc. The follow-up, Glass Onion (TIFF ’22), focused on a tech-bro billionaire, ratcheting up the humour and evoking Herbert Ross’ cult classic The Last of Sheila. (It also threw in the added fun of seeing obscenely rich people’s gaudiest stuff get trashed.) Wake Up Dead Man shifts gears again with a relatively sombre look into the tensions between faith and logic.
This time, Johnson riffs on the dark, gothic elements of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue — a seemingly impossible locked-room scenario involving a corpse — while still incorporating many of the series’ signature elements. Set in a small town and focusing on its local church, Wake Up Dead Man is packed with stars, including Josh O’Connor as a the younger cleric to Josh Brolin’s autocratic, abrasive priest, Glenn Close as his right-hand person, plus Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Jeremy Renner (whose likeness had a memorable appearance in Glass Onion), and Mila Kunis as a local cop who is as determined as Blanc to solve this seemingly insoluble case. And there’s a murder that presents itself as an impossible crime. All that and Craig delivers perhaps his best Blanc yet.
9. Sacrifice
Directed by: Romain Gavras
Cast: Chris Evans, Anya Taylor-Joy, Vincent Cassel, Salma Hayek Pinault and John Malkovich.
Synopsis: The attendees at an environmental conference/benefit in Greece seem more like the guests at an A-list Hollywood party than a serious intellectual summit. There’s actor Mike Tyler (Chris Evans), the oblivious star of numerous successful action movies, who’s now undergoing an existential crisis. He hopes to deliver a rousing speech demanding a real response to climate change, and to reset his brand in the process.
Braken (Vincent Cassel), a fusion of your least favourite billionaires, is present to muster support for a highly questionable deep-sea mining effort targeting essential minerals.
Complicating their efforts is Joan (Anya Taylor-Joy), the leader of a doomsday eco-cult. She and her acolytes are convinced the only way to prevent the catastrophic, world-ending eruption of the huge volcano burbling off the coast is to offer up suitably famous sacrifices.
10. The Lost Bus
Directed by: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, America Ferrera, Yul Vazquez, Ashlie Atkinson, and Spencer Watson.
Synopsis: Based on real events that transpired during the deadliest fire in California history in November 2018, this heart-pounding docudrama from Oscar-nominated director Paul Greengrass (United 93) stars Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey as a driver in a desperate struggle to bring a busload of children to safety.
“Another dry and windy day in paradise” is rapidly transforming Northern California into something close to an inferno. Fires are spreading and huge plumes of smoke fill the horizon. School bus driver Kevin McCay (McConaughey) is ending his day when he gets a call requesting help for 23 children stranded at Ponderosa Elementary School. As the disaster escalates, Kevin knows that navigating his way toward the school could prove perilous, but a sense of responsibility, along with memories of personal loss, send him hurtling into harm’s way.
