Dear TIFF 2019 programmers: You had us at J.Lo. The singer/actor/icon's movie Hustlers will make its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Hustlers (which was produced by Lopez and co-stars Constance Wu, Cardi B, Keke Palmer, Lizzo, and Lili Reinhart, so basically our dream group chat) is one of many women-backed movies on the roster at this year’s festival. For the first time in festival history, half of the gala presentations (the super fancy red carpet premieres) are directed by women — like the already-getting-Oscar-buzz Harriet Tubman biopic Harriet by Kasi Lemmons, and the coming-of-age story How To Build a Girl, based on the novel of the same name by Caitlin Moran and directed by Coky Giedroyc.
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Team Canada also has a strong presence on the TIFF red carpet this year. There are 26 Canadian movies in total at the festival, starting with the doc Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson And The Band, which opens TIFF on Sept. 5. Two more must-see docs include Alanis Obomsawin’s Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger, about Jordan, a five-year-old from Norway House Cree Nation in Manitoba whose struggles led to life-changing legislation in healthcare for Indigenous youth, and Ellen Page’s documentary There’s Something In The Water, about racism in Nova Scotia. We're also keeping are eyes on Semi Chellas' American Woman, which re-imagines Patty Hearst’s kidnapping.
The full list of movies showing at TIFF is below. We will continue to update the list as TIFF announces more films.
2008
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
A Herdade
Abominable
American Woman
All The Birds Rained Down
Antigone
Bad Education
Black Conflux
Blackbird
Blood Quantum
Book of Hours
Castle in the Ground
Clemency
Clifton Hill
Coming Home Again
Coppers
David Foster: Off The Record
Delphine
Dolemite Is My Name
Easy Land
Ema
Endings, Beginnings
Flood
Ford V Ferrari
Frankie
God’s Nightmare
Greed
Guest of Honour
Harriet
Heroic Losers
Highway to Heaven
Honey Boy
Hope Gap
Hot Flash
How to Build a Girl
Hrvoji, Look at You From The Tower
Hustlers
I Am in the World As Free and Slender as a Deer on a Plain
I Am Woman
I’ll End Up in Jail
It’s Nothing
Jarvik
Jojo Rabbit
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Joker
Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger
Judy
Just Mercy
Knives Out
Kuessipan
La Belle Époque
Life Support
Marriage Story
Measure
Military Wives
Motherless Brooklyn
Murmur
My Skin, Luminous
No Crying At The Dinner Table
No. 7 Cherry Lane
Now is the Time
Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band
One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk
Oracle
Ordinary Love
Pain And Glory
Parasite
Pelican Blood
Please Speak Continuously And Describe Your Experiences As They Come To You
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Radioactive
Raf
Rebel
Saturday Fiction
Second Generation
Tammy’s Always Dying
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open
The Depths
The Friend
The Goldfinch
The Last Porno Show
The Laundromat
The Lighthouse
The Other Lamb
The Painted Bird
The Personal History of David Copperfield
The Physics of Sorrow
The Report
The Rest of Us
The Sky Is Pink
The Song of Names
The Twentieth Century
The Two Popes
There’s Something in the Water
This Ink Runs Deep
This Is Not a Movie
True History of the Kelly Gang
Uncut Gems
Volcano
Weathering With You
Western Stars
While at War
White Lie