Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2026 – films to watch: The Surgeon, Dorothy, Angh and more…
Festival has just started yesterday and ends on September 20…
The Surgeon – Roshan Sethi’s genre busting new feature centres Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh
WRITER-DIRECTOR and medical doctor Roshan Sethi hits the Toronto International Film Festival (September 10-20) with his latest film…
Starring Michelle Yeoh, as a successful surgeon who is brought out of retirement or something close to it by a criminal gang whose team member, (if we can put it like that) needs some urgent medical attention.
UK ‘The Office’ star Martin Freeman is the leader of the gang and Yeoh channels something of her Oscar winning character performance in ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ in this mad genre caper from the director behind the hit gay romcom, ‘A Nice Indian Boy’and ‘7 Days’. It has its world premiere on Saturday (September 12).
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother – New Muslim action hero
STARRING two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali (‘Moonlight’ and ‘Green Book’), this is an action film that is unlikely to have come anywhere near you before… Directed by Bassam Tariq, who helped bring Riz Ahmed’s ‘Mogul Mowgli’ to the big screen as the director for that, there’s huge anticipation about this film that is set in Texas and is centred around Ali as a devout Muslim and hit man who loses his wife and must carry out what might be his last hit job. ‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’is a reference to Islamic hadith (sayings and wisdom attributed to the prophet).
Its world premiere is on Saturday (September12) at one of the largest capacity cinemas available to TIFF.
Dorothy – Tamil (Tarantino?) enters the fray…
TWO childhood friends grow up in rural Tamil Nadu are shaped by the forces around them – toxic masculinity, caste, violence and patriarchy.
In steps Dorothy who causes a significant change in the way the two friends see the world around them.
Karthik Subbaraj’s Tamil language feature is serious mash-up and hard to classify – it has all the pizzazz of a noir thriller, gangster flicks, and a potboiler of a romance.
Some of these elements are evident in previous films (‘Mahaan’, ‘Petta’) and have led to comparisons with Tarantino.
The music is composed by the prolific Ilaiyarajah who is also well known for his work with Tamil Indian auteur Mani Ratnam.
Produced by Oscar-winner Guneet Monga – this is Tamil cinema on the world stage and doing its thang…
It has its first screening later this evening, BST 10.30pm (September 11)
Angh – Nagaland goes West
EMERGING from the north east of India and about an area few Indians know too much about, ‘Angh’ goes deep and back into time.
Set in the 1960s, in Nagaland state, a missionary (Dougla Henshall) turns up and befriends (?) village chief Anghba.
No one is left there though except his wife and young son who doesn’t communicate.
The missionary offers hope in this area on the Indo-Burma border and dominated by jungles – but at what price…?
Nagaland native director Theja Rio, a graduate of the UK’s National Film and Television School builds on his short film of the same name and now the letter from his heart about the place he knows so well has reached far away shores and announced his people’s arrival on a world stage.
The world premiere of ‘Angh’ takes place on Tuesday, September 15.
The Difficult Bride – Bangladesh two sides of the marriage coin…
RUBAIYAT HOSSAIN’s feature is powerful, feminist take on a young bride preparing for her nuptials.
Read our preview here – this film enjoyed its world premiere in Venice and screens in Toronto on Wednesday, September 16 for the first time. It is also coming to London Film Festival (October 7-18).
Elephants in the Fog – Nepali film that wowed Cannes in N America for the first time
CONSIDERING recent tragic events in Nepal, this film has an added urgency and is about changing landscapes, lifestyles and development. Screens on Sunday, September 13. Abinash Bikram Shah’s film caused a stir in Cannes.
See our review from Cannes 2026.
https://asianculturevulture.com/cannes-2026-ucr-prize-film-elephants-in-the-fog-report-to-mother-palme-fjord-and-hope-reviews/
Termite – From award-laden doc to short fiction
OSCAR nominated Indian director Shaunak Sen screens ‘Termite’ which is 31 minutes long and is about two middle aged termite exterminators whose lives are about to be turned upside down by an unexpected marriage proposal. Sen’s documentary ‘All That Breathes’ about two brothers who tend to injured raptor birds in Delhi travelled the international film festival circuit after triumphing initially at Sundance. In an interview with acv when it screened at London Film Festival in 2024, he told us he was moving into narrative fiction for his next project.
Also screening in Short Cuts 2 at TIFF is British Afghan director Elham Ehsas’s ‘Forgotten Spaceman’ about Afghanistan’s first astronaut and created out of existing 16mm film of Abdul Ahad Momand. The Pashto title for this short is ‘Hershewe Fazanawerd’.
Fans of Zarrar Kahn (Hamza Bangash) are likely to be tickled by his latest, a short, ‘The Lion Does Not Concern Himself’. This is a comedy about a gym coach who has another persona as a rather toxic podcaster and then unexpectedly meets a woman who turns his life upside down. Kahn’s feature ‘In Flames’ premiered at Cannes in 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuwseenVSEo
These short films screen later this evening (1.20am BST September 13) and again on Wednesday.
Check listings/tickets: https://tiff.net/
Coming our Venice International Film Festival round up and our link in with Cannes Market 2026 – keep tuned on all platforms!
