21 Films I’d Like to See at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival

This adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s debut novel jumps between the 1950s and 1980s to explore the lingering effects of war. Suzu Hirose and Yoh Yoshida star as the same woman in different decades as she tries to rebuild her life after surviving the atomic bomb.

How’s this for a premise: after a woman dies in a poisoning accident, she returns as a ghost haunting her husband’s… vacuum cleaner. Which will come in handy as he tries to rid his family’s factory of restless spirits. Thailand has a long history of horror films, but Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s A Useful Ghost looks to be something much more unique and offbeat than your typical ghost story.

Life in Singapore is controlled by strict rules, rules that any teenager is bound to rail against. Challenging conformity is a fraught proposal, though, in a country that frowns on something as trivial as chewing gum. But with the help of a camcorder, a tomboy and her friends are able to rebel in secret — until someone discovers their little acts on challenging the status quo.

Earth may be destroyed, but life goes on in the form of four dandelion seeds who travel through space and end up on a distant alien planet. Billed as “a quiet fable about nature’s infinite capacity for regeneration in the absence of human interference,” Dandelion’s Odyssey is a unique blend of animation and live-action filmmaking that was shot in Japan, France, and Iceland.

It’s not unusual for a kid to be scared of monsters under their bed. But 10-year-old Aurora has an unusual method for dealing with her monsters: she hires the hitman who just so happens to live next door. Bryan Fuller has created several memorable TV series, including Pushing Daisies and Hannibal. Dust Bunny is his first feature film, and finds him reuniting with Hannibal’s Mads Mikkelsen, who plays the monster-killing assassin. Dust Bunny also stars Sigourney Weaver and David Dastmalchian.

Based on the popular and award-winning video game, Exit 8 is a psychological thriller about a man stuck in a seemingly endless subway corridor. His only way of escape is to notice any anomalies and inconsistencies; if he misses one, he’s sent right back to where he started. Will he be able to make his way to Exit 8 and get out, or will he be stuck there forever? Exit 8 stars Kazunari Ninomiya, a member of the Japanese idol group Arashi who has previously starred in Gantz and Assassination Classroom.

Guillermo del Toro has always been fascinated by monsters, as seen in such films as The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Hellboy. But his latest film takes on the greatest monster story of all time, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Oscar Isaac stars as the titular scientist who’s driven to create new life, only to create a monster (Jacob Elordi) whose intellect and reasoning makes him impossible to control. If the trailer is any indication, then Frankenstein will feature some of del Toro’s most stunning visuals to date.

Thanks to his work on films like Sha Po Lang, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, and the Rurouni Kenshin series, Kenji Tanigaki has established himself as one of the world’s premier action choreographers. And now, he’s back with a film of his own, in which a father descends into the underworld to save his daughter from human traffickers. The Furious stars Xie Miao (who previously starred as a child alongside Jet Li in The New Legend of Shaolin and My Father is a Hero), Joe Taslim (The Raid: Redemption), and JeeJa Yanin (Chocolate), and boasts a soundtrack by the one and only Flying Lotus.

Few things are more enjoyable than a good heist movie full of twists and turns, and David Mackenzie’s Fuze promises to be just that. When an unexploded WW2-era bomb is found at a construction site, the police mobilize to evacuate the area — but of course, nothing is quite what it seems. Fuze stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Sam Worthington, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Mackenzie’s previous film, Relay, also had its world premier at last year’s TIFF.

Not only did Aziz Ansari write and direct Good Fortune, but he also stars in this comedy about two men — a guy living in his car (Ansari) and a super-rich tech bro (Seth Rogen) — who switch places thanks to the machinations of an angel (a winged Keanu Reeves). Satirizing the growing inequalities of our modern age, Good Fortune also stars Sandra Oh and Keke Palmer.

Jafar Panahi is one of Iran’s most celebrated filmmakers. He’s also one of the nation’s most controversial, and has experienced considerable persecution from the government. Indeed, It Was Just an Accident — which won the top prize at this year’s Cannes festival — was completed shortly after he was released from prison. Panahi’s latest film, a thriller in which a former prisoner seeks revenge on the man he believes to be his former torturer, was undoubtedly inspired by his own incarceration.

In 2017, Takahide Hori released an award-winning stop-motion film titled Junk Head. Now he’s back with a prequel featuring clones, a sadomasochistic cult, bizarre anomalies, and alternate dimensions — and it’s all up to a single robot to preserve the space-time continuum. Hori’s animation has been compared to that of Jan Švankmajer and Phil Tippett.

Before his death in 1994, John Candy was a beloved actor thanks to his gregarious and comedic performances in such classics as Spaceballs, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, The Great Outdoors, Uncle Buck, and Home Alone. Directed by Colin Hanks, John Candy: I Like Me features interviews with fellow actors (e.g., Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Martin Short) and family members alike, and pays tribute to Candy’s career while also highlighting the issues that continually dogged him.

Originally released in 1994, Nadja is a haunting take on the vampire tale highlighted by innovative cinematography and a killer soundtrack featuring Portishead, My Bloody Valentine, and The Verve. Nadja originally premiered at the 1994 Toronto festival, so it’s only fitting for the film’s 4K restoration to have its world premier at this year’s festival.

Park Chan-wook is a master of darkly twisted and suspenseful storytelling (e.g., The Handmaiden, Snowpiercer, Oldboy), and his latest film looks to be more of the same. Superstar Lee Byung-hun (last seen as the Front Man in Netflix’s Squid Game) is a recently fired paper salesman who will do anything to get a job — even if that means creating a fake company in order to identify and eliminate his rivals. No Other Choice is adapted from Donald Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax.

Bob Odenkirk became an unlikely action star with 2021’s Nobody. This year’s Normal finds him reuniting with Nobody writer Derek Kolstad — who also created the John Wick franchise — and together with director Ben Wheatley (Free Fire, Kill List), they deliver what looks like another blood-soaked thriller. Odenkirk plays a small-town sheriff who is suddenly in everyone’s crosshairs after a botched bank robbery exposes his town’s horrible secret. Normal also stars Henry Winkler and Lena Headey.

Brendan Fraser is a down-on-his-luck actor in Tokyo who gets the most unusual role: he’s hired by a company that uses actors to serve as surrogates in other people’s lives. Before long, he’s playing the role of a deceased husband and father, which gets complicated when he develops an actual emotional connection which his (fake) family. Rental Family also stars Takehiro Hira (Shōgun, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) and Mari Yamamoto (Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Pachinko).

Set in 15th century Hungary, Rise of the Raven is inspired by the story of John Hunyadi, a military commander who fought to defend his country from the invading Ottoman Empire. Produced as a ten-episode series that’s been called one of the most expensive European productions of all time, Rise of the Raven looks to be a sweeping historical epic that rivals anything in Game of Thrones.

Thanks to films like Belle, Mirai, and Summer Wars, Mamoru Hosoda is one of the world’s most acclaimed animators. His latest film is an epic and fantastical take on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where the young heroine seeking to avenge her father’s death is killed and sent to a Purgatory from which she must escape in order to exact her vengeance.

Based on Kid Koala’s own graphic novel, Space Cadet is a heartfelt and dialogue-free animated film about a young girl obsessed with space exploration, and her robotic best friend who tries to get along as best it can in her absence. In addition to Kid Koala’s own music, Space Cadet also features songs by Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O and Digable Planets’ Mariana “Ladybug” Vieira.

Yeon Sang-ho burst onto the scene with 2016’s zombie-filled Train to Busan. But The Ugly exchanges action and horror for something more dramatic and mysterious. After his missing mother’s body is found, Dong-hwan (Park Jeong-min) is determined to learn the truth of her life and death. In the process, the film flashes back to his blind father (also played by Park) and the story gets more complicated. The Ugly was adapted from Yeon’s own graphic novel Face and unlike his blockbusters, was shot in just a few weeks with a skeleton crew.