My first rush line experience of TIFF ’25, I saw The Captive because my sisters came downtown for the afternoon and wanted to see whatever was available. I find that movies I see this way are some of the most exciting. Directed by Alejandro Amenábar, The Captive is a...
What a way to spend a Sunday morning. Abuse in the church is unfortunately something that is not surprising to hear about anymore, but Nuns vs. The Vatican exposes yet another kind that has managed to go under the radar for decades: abuse against nuns in the Catholic...
In My Father’s Shadow, brothers, Remi and Akin (real life brothers, Godwin Chiemerie Egbo and Chibuike Marvelous Egbo), accompany their father, Folarin (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù), from the village to Lagos to collect his salary – their first time in the city. I was thinking of...
The Eyes of Ghana follows Chris Hesse - documentary filmmaker and cameraman for the first President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah – in what he calls the ‘evening of his life’. Now in his 90s, he charges younger Ghanian filmmakers like Anita Afonu with the importance of...
In response to a letter from a stranger, Mary Stevens (Ariāna Osborne), a Māori teacher, travels from Aotearoa to England to find out more about parents she never knew. On getting there, she learns that the author of the letter she received is dead, and is instead...
I love how seriously everyone in this film takes music. The Choral, directed by Nicholas Hytner, is the story of a community in 1916 England working to put on a choral in the middle of a war that is taking its young men – and singers – away. Ralph Fiennes plays Dr....
In Laundry, a black family who runs a local laundry, fights to keep their business (the only black one in a white area) alive, as well as to ensure the safety of their children in apartheid South Africa. Despite the exemptions given to its patriarch, Enoch (Siyabonga...
I didn’t think I liked any horror, thriller, or slasher movies until I saw Scream (1996) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) (within weeks of each other, which was a treat for me as a kid who LOVED Scooby-Doo #iykyk). I found the jump scares and the mystery so...
Written by Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, and directed by Christopher Landon, Drop follows single mother, Violet (Meghann Fahy), on her very first date with Henry (Brandon Sklenar) while her son is home with her sister (Violett Beane). The date starts promising,...