What to see at the Toronto International Film Festival, which turns 50 this year

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The Toronto International Film Festival turns 50 this year, and you know what that means. Cake!

As part of the opening-day festivities, TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey will preside over a ceremonial cake cutting and the unveiling of a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame in honour of the event, which began in 1976 as the second-run Festival of Festivals, and grew over the years into one of the industry’s biggest behemoths of movie premieres.

The event will take place rain or shine at 4 p.m. Thursday in front of the Lightbox at the corner of King and John Streets, the heart of “festival street,” which turns 10 years old this year and results in a three-day closure of a stretch of King. Organizers promise “a fun surprise” immediately following the event.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a party without attendees. TIFF on Wednesday released its “subject to change” list of more than 700 stars and luminaries expected to come to the festival. It runs from A (Abdellah Taia) to Z (Zofia Wichlacz), and if those outliers aren’t familiar enough, it also includes Keanu Reeves, Dwayne Johnson, Matthew McConaughey, Kerry Washington, Sydney Sweeney, Daniel Craig, Paul Mescal, Scarlett Johansson and Angelina Jolie.

Ryan Reynolds will be in town to promote John Candy: I Like Me, a documentary he executive produced about the beloved Canadian entertainer. Directed by Colin Hanks, it’s also the festival’s opening-night film, screening at 6 p.m. at the Princess of Wales Theatre (renamed the Visa Screening Room for the duration of the fest) and again at 8 p.m. at Roy Thomson Hall.

Also premiering Thursday night is the festival’s Midnight Madness opener, Matt Johnson’s Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie, a filmic spinoff of his wacky, Toronto-centric TV series Nirvana the Band the Show.

This critic is excited for both of those premieres, not to mention the festival opening-night energy that accompanies them. But here are five more to watch for as the festival unspools between Sept. 4 and Sept. 14. (More information at TIFF.net.)

Mile End Kicks — Writer/director Chandler Levack was at TIFF in 2022 with the delightful comedy I Like Movies. Her followup in a rom-com starring Barbie Ferreira as Grace Pine, a young music critic writing for a male-centric indie publication in 2011 Montreal. (Is this the first set-in-the 2010s period picture?) Hilarity ensues when she falls for two members of the same rock band.

& Sons — What a United Nations of talent gathered for this one: Argentine filmmaker Pablo Trapero directs a British cast headed by Bill Nighy, based on a 2013 novel by Paris-born American author David Gilbert, and adapted by Canada’s Sarah Polley. All that and an ampersand opening, making it the festival’s top movie — alphabetically at least.

Eternal Return / Eternity — I can’t keep these titles straight so I’m just going to lump them together.

According to the TIFF program guide, the first is a “visually innovative and intoxicatingly romantic fantasy drama from writer-director Yaniv Raz,” with Naomi Scott, Kit Harington and Simon Callow “as an adventurous trio charting a journey back through time in search of the power to love again.”

The other is an afterlife love triangle, as an elderly couple (Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller) die within a week of each other and meet in the hereafter — along with her first husband (Callum Turner), who died in the Korean War and has been waiting 67 years for her to join him.

Frankenstein — Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has been wanting to adapt Mary Shelley’s 1818 masterpiece for decades now, and his films — including Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy and The Shape of Water — seem to have been heading toward this one. Here is is.

Jaws — What else turns 50 this year? Only Steven Spielberg’s original summer blockbuster, which is getting three screenings late in the festival at the TIFF Lightbox, on the big screen, in 35 mm. You know, the way it was meant to be seen. duunnn dunn. duuuunnnn duun. dun dun dun dun dun dun dun…