9 best movies of TIFF 2025: 'Hedda,' 'Hamnet,' ''Cover-Up,' more

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TORONTO — Hardcore movie fans know that the festival stretches on until Sunday, but for us, another TIFF is in the books: a week of gorging on potential awards hopefuls, contenders from other showcases, midnight snacks (thanks for the poutine, Toronto) and a number of wonderful surprises. We leave with nine films that shook us undeniably. You’ll be hearing about these titles in the months ahead.

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‘Cover-Up’

Journalist Seymour Hersh in 1975, as seen in the documentary “Cover-Up.”

(The New York Times)

When real-life political anxieties (or worse) infuse the atmosphere of a film festival, it’s hard to pretend that celebrating art is ever enough. “Cover-Up” was, for me, the antidote: a furious, hard-nosed profile of legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, the man who broke the My Lai massacre in 1969, then went on to an impressive run of stories that included revelations about Watergate, the CIA and Abu Ghraib. Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour”), co-directing with Mark Obenhaus, mainly tries to stay out of the way of Hersh’s ferocious forward momentum, capturing the writer’s method with a minimum of wasted words. “I’ve got every right to be here, buddy,” Hersh bats back to a displeased listener and you thrill to an era when breaking the news wasn’t chilled by caution. — Joshua Rothkopf

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‘Duse’

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi in the movie “Duse.”

(Erika Kuenka)

It’s hard to overstate the wondrous surprise that director Pietro Marcello unleashed on us at 2019’s TIFF with “Martin Eden,” an inspired take on a Jack London novel that went on to make many critics’ year-end lists, including that of L.A. Times’ Justin Chang. Marcello is always going to be a filmmaker worth watching, and his incredible style — a penchant for historical turning points, synthesized dance music and archival footage — is very much in evidence for his latest movie, about the iconic Italian theater diva Eleonora Duse (an unhinged Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), the greatest of her day. Here’s an idea of how crazy this film is: It hires someone to play Benito Mussolini, yet he’s the most restrained performer in the cast. Often, the flow is one of dueling actor meltdowns, a combination of “Topsy-Turvy” and Howard Hawks’ “Twentieth Century.” Family members seethe, assistants cower and competitors sharpen their claws. This is very much a good thing. — Joshua Rothkopf

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‘Fuze’

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the movie “Fuze.”

(Anton / TIFF)

Director David Mackenzie (“Hell or High Water”) doesn’t let a minute of this gripping thriller tick by before a construction worker discovers a massive World War II bomb in the middle of a crowded London neighborhood. In an instant, “Fuze” springs into action: The police chief (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) evacuates the residents and a munitions whiz (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) arrives to dismantle the explosive. Some movies would make a meal out of that setup. Here, it’s just an amuse-bouche. A nest of thieves that includes Theo James and Sam Worthington is hiding inside an emptied apartment building eager to get to work. “Fuze” is a perfectly plotted genre exercise with more double crosses than a dozen Hail Marys. But the best twist is when you realize how much you’ve come to care about these characters, be they saints or sinners or a bit of both. — Amy Nicholson

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‘Good News’

A scene from the movie “Good News.”

(TIFF)

In 1970, a group of young Japanese zealots hoping to ignite a communist revolution hijacked a passenger plane and demanded to be flown to Pyongyang. That actually happened, but Byun Sung-hyun’s deeply cynical retelling doesn’t want you to take its word for it — and it’s best not to trust these careerist officials to save the day either. In this whip-smart absurdist comedy, everything is political theater and everyone is acting only in their best interest. As these radicals and bureaucrats fudge the line between truth and fiction, they also lose sight of whether they want to live in a democracy or a dictatorship. They’re most comfortable behaving like headless chickens running around looking for someone to blame. This fanged satire aspires to be a new “Dr. Strangelove,” and it comes pretty close. (Stanley Kubrick would have gotten a kick from the American soldier whose vapid advice gets out-thundered by a blast of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”) — Amy Nicholson

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‘Hamnet’

Jessie Buckley, center, in the movie “Hamnet.”

(Agata Grzybowska / Focus Features)

Though it is, of course, crass to reduce movies to these terms, if any film has emerged from the recent roundelay of fall festivals as an Oscar favorite, it is Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel “Hamnet.” Exploring the domestic relationship between William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley), the film maps how the loss of their young son may have been the inspiration for “Hamlet,” a tragic exploration of grief and regret that has endured for centuries. The film manages to recontextualize one of the most thoroughly examined pieces of English-language literature, asking audiences to see it with fresh eyes. While it may seem a bit of a cheat to make the emotional climax of your movie a staging of “Hamlet,” it is the great feat of Zhao’s “Hamnet” that it feels totally earned and exquisitely devastating, motivated by the raw energy of the filmmaking and the ripped-open performances of Mescal and Buckley. — Mark Olsen

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‘Hedda’

Tessa Thompson, left, Nina Hoss and Imogen Poots in the movie “Hedda.”

(Parisa Taghizadeh / Prime)

Amy has already written vividly about the powerhouse that is Tessa Thompson (“my favorite mean girl”) in Nia DaCosta’s adaptation of “Hedda Gabler.” I fully agree; she’s so dominating, she puts a warp over the entire movie. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention the fearless Nina Hoss, recently seen standing up to Cate Blanchett in “Tár” and making an uncomfortable trip to Romania as a corporate exploiter in “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World.” Here, Hoss takes on the tricky role of Lövborg (now gender-switched), brilliant but doomed, and you luxuriate in the German star’s spiky way with a monologue and explosions of rage. Her Lövborg is a persuasive foil to Thompson’s Hedda — together, their scenes were the best of the fest. — Joshua Rothkopf

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‘Maddie’s Secret’

A scene from the movie “Maddie’s Secret.”

(TIFF)

Part of what makes “Maddie’s Secret” — the feature debut as writer-director from comedian John Early — so brilliant is that it is so difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is. A camp send-up of old-school issue-of-the-week TV movies? Yes. A fully sincere tale of a young woman (played by Early) grappling with an eating disorder? Also yes. A satire of contemporary influencer culture? Again, yes. Assembling a collective of friends and collaborators including Kate Berlant, Vanessa Bayer, Conner O’Malley and others, Early has crafted something both straight-faced and silly. With Early himself fulfilling a long-held dream of portraying a classic ingenue, a role he fulfills with tender gusto, the film feels like the work of a bunch of pals having fun together while simultaneously producing a treatise on how to update the melodrama for modern times. It all coheres with surprising ease, working on multiple levels at once and playing as something thoughtful, emotional and, most of all, fun. — Mark Olsen

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‘Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie’

A scene from the movie “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.”

(TIFF)

The award for most Canadian film of the festival has to go to this goofy comedy about two musicians desperate to land their first gig (and Neon is confident it’ll also play like gangbusters in a theater near you). Matt Johnson (“BlackBerry”) and Jay McCarrol started playing their eponymous wannabes over a decade and a half ago in a web series that became a Vice TV show. Now, they’ve brainstormed a playful way to merge their past footage with the present — they’re such clever scavengers that when they heard about a shooting at Drake’s mansion, they raced over to film a gag inside the police cordon. This ingenious combination of hidden camera improvisation and tight screenwriting earned such an enthusiastic response at TIFF that when a man in my theater yelled that he was the real-life hardware store employee who helped the duo skydive off of Toronto’s CN Tower, he was invited onstage to take a bow. — Amy Nicholson

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‘The Testament of Ann Lee’

Amanda Seyfried in the movie “The Testament of Ann Lee.”

(TIFF)

A recent Oscar nominee for co-writing “The Brutalist,” Mona Fastvold fully comes into her own as a director with her third feature, “The Testament of Ann Lee.” Co-written with partner and frequent collaborator Brady Corbet, the film continues their shared interest in historical fiction, this time based on the story of the founder of the religious sect known as the Shakers. Starring Amanda Seyfried in a performance of furious commitment, the film follows her from Manchester, England, to pre-Revolutionary War America on a quest for religious, civil and spiritual freedom. Director Fastvold portrays Ann Lee as a proto-feminist visionary, a woman determined to be unbound by anything except her own will. The interludes of ecstatic chanting and movement (with songs based on Shaker hymns adapted by Daniel Blumberg) provides the film with its backbone. It’s not quite a musical but close enough, a bold and bracing account of an often overlooked chapter of early Americana. — Mark Olsen