Toronto International Film Festival 2025 under way… (September 4-14) – Riz Ahmed’s ‘Hamlet’, ‘Sholay’ 50 and ‘Homebound’ hit North America

🎥 Riz Ahmed and Aneil Karia’s ‘Hamlet’

🎥 New Series ‘Gandhi’ by acclaimed Indian filmmaker Hansal Mehta

🎥 Sholay – restored in 4K classic 1975 film with director Ramesh Sippy deleted scenes – marks 50th anniversary screening with world premiere of new restored print

🎥 UK-Pakistani Seemab Gul debut feature film, ‘Ghost School’ world premiere

🎥 ‘Homebound’ starring Ishaan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa and directed by Neeraj Ghaywan – Toronto now after unforgettable Cannes 2025

🎥 Anurag Kashyap ‘Bandar’ known as ‘Monkey Cage’ starring Bobby Deol – world premiere

🎥 US ‘Parks and Recreation’ star Aziz Ansari first feature film with stellar cast: Seth Rogen – ‘Good Fortune’

🎥 ‘Bayaan’ starring Huma Qureshi – World premiere for film by Indian Bikas Ranjan Mishra

🎥 Satyajit Ray ‘Nights and Days in the Forest’ (‘Aranyer Din Ratri’) second festival screening (after Cannes 2025)

RIZ AHMED, whose latest film stateside ‘Relay’ is receiving rave reviews, returns to the Toronto International Film Festival (September 4-14) with his own film version of the Shakespeare classic, ‘Hamlet’.

Teaming up with director Aneil Karia again – the two who won an Oscar (Live Action Short) in 2022 for their, ‘The Long Goodbye’ have set the 16th century Danish drama within a South Asian family living in London.

Hansal Mehta is one of the India’s best known directors and he presents his episodic series ‘Gandhi’ about the making of the man from student, to lawyer to politician and the anti-colonial struggle.

For the first time since it was originally released, the film ‘Sholay’ – which turned Amitabh Bachchan into India’s biggest film star – will be seen in a full director’s (Ramesh Sippy) cut version, which now has additional scenes. Director Sippy is expected to attend.

Seemab Gul lives between the UK and Pakistan and her first feature ‘Ghost School’ is set in the country and features a young cast. She first spoke to us when she had a short showcased at the Venice Film Festival in 2021.

Anurag Kashyap returns to TIFF (we covered his ‘Manmarizyaan’ in 2019) – with ‘Bandar’ which is called ‘Monkey Cage’ for its TIFF screenings. It’s a drama where a middle class Indian guy in Mumbai ends up incarcerated.

Fresh from its success in Cannes, Indian writer-director Neeraj Ghaywan brings his quotidian epic, ‘Homebound’. Centred around three young friends looking to get on the career ladder – with allied dreams and ambitions, it is hugely powerful watch. (See our Cannes 2025 interviews with Ghaywan, and the cast and this film’s subtitlers Jahan Singh Bakshi and French Francois-Xavier Durrandy).

Aziz Ansari graduates from being in front of the camera to behind it. The well-known comedian and stand-up who first broke through in the hit US comedy, ‘Parks and Recreation’ assembles a top level cast and inserts himself into the improbable proceedings as two misfiring angels (of the winged variety!) seek a job swap of sorts…

Well-known Indian and international actor Huma Qureshi steps into the fray as rookie detective who has to investigate a cult leader accused of sexual abuse in Baayan. This is Bikas Ranjan Mishra’s second film after ‘Chauranga’.

Also screening for the first time in North America in all its 4K glory now, is the classic Satyajit Ray film, ‘Days and Nights in the Forest’. Regarded by some as technically more beautiful than the original and doing every justice to Ray’s and long-time cinematographer-collaborator Soumendo Roy’s vision, this is a film where urban panache meets rural and traditional wisdom and cautions. It was screened as a Cannes Classic earlier this year.

The Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 4 to September 14

More – https://tiff.net/

• This post was published on September 4 but due to technical issues, its actual publication date is as shown (changeover between old website and this one).