TIFF Interest List 2023

A young teacher hopes to be transferred to Istanbul after four years of mandatory service in a remote village, but is accused of inappropriate contact by two students. After losing hope, a colleague offers him new perspectives on life.

A young filmmaker who currently works in a hospital takes a mental patient out for a short ride to find out who she really is.

In the aftermath of a crime, the victim's sister fights to obtain a fair trial and justice for her brother.

The blossoming relationship between three young adults in their twenties.

Survivors from a massive earthquake struggle for a new life in Seoul.

A lay preacher arrives at a British settlement in 1830s. His violent past is soon drawn into question and his faith put to the test, as he finds himself caught in the middle of a bloody war between Maori tribes.

Naïlle enters Emma's life after she re-evaluates her professional and personal relationships with a demanding partner. The cellist and single mother offers Emma a new family dynamic.

Investigative journalist Luyanda Masinda's life is thrown into shock when her one night lover, renowned editor Stanley Galloway, is hijacked and killed in front of her in a busy Johannesburg street. When it becomes clear that Stanley's death was engineered by unknown forces in high places, and Luyanda discovers that Stanley has been receiving explosive information from a secret military whistle-blower, she realizes that the clue to his death may lie with the secrets the whistle-blower is determined to reveal. After an initial clash, Luyanda and the whistle-blower Albert Loots join forces and must sacrifice everything in their quest to expose state capture of South Africa's military assets by a corrupt group profiteering from the illicit trade in military hardware and chemical weaponry to rogue states across Africa.

Two swindlers, deep in debt, infiltrate a group of climate activists when they are attracted to the free food and drinks they are offered.

A teen girl is diagnosed with a reproductive condition that upends her plans to have a sex life, propelling her to explore unusual methods. Her relationships are challenged with everyone in her life, but most importantly, herself.

A comical attempt to save a New Jersey record store and confront a mid-life crisis.

Two adolescent Navajo cousins from different worlds bond during a summer herding sheep on their grandmother's ranch in Arizona while learning more about their family's past and themselves.

A painter plots a heist to steal back his own painting from the same museum vault where a filmmaker is shooting their next project.

The counselors of a summer camp are terrorized by a masked killer.

Twenty-five long years after his time in the limelight, former child actor Cody Lightning tries to revive his fortunes with a self-produced sequel to Smoke Signals (1998).

Follows Veronica who is released from prison after trial in which she was accused of murdering her mother and her mother's lover. She was found not guilty, but the public's opinion is another matter.

A young woman vampire is unable to kill to meet her need for blood, but may have found a solution in a young man with suicidal tendencies.

A transgender woman must act as her mother's son at home in New Delhi, but can be the woman she really is with her friends and at work with the Government of India.

Benjamin, a working class gay man living in Toronto, struggles to obtain expensive health care after being assaulted by a stranger.

In Rome, during a January weekend a sudden heatwave arrives. The sun is initially pleasant, but the heat quickly escalates to a frightening degree, resulting in people and animals losing self-control.

After the death of the family patriarch, a mother and daughter's precarious existence is ripped apart. They must find strength in each other if they are to survive the malevolent forces that threaten to engulf them.

A widow pretends to be pregnant with a son in order to save her daughter and home from a relative exploiting Jordan's patriarchal inheritance laws.

In the early 70s, after leaving their troubled hometown in Haiti, a young boy and his mother settle in a small rural village in Quebec where the boy counts on his invisible friend to understand the new world around him.

During a train trip to New Delhi, a pair of commandos face an army of invading bandits.

After the mayor of an idyllic island village discovers a child with mysterious powers awash on their shores, the once peaceful community devolves into civil war, torn over the belief that the child is the next saviour.