10 of the best films from TIFF — and when you can watch them

Despite a return to red carpets and theatre premieres, the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival was anything but normal.  

For an event renowned for its unique ability to generate buzz among its huge audience — the largest for a public film festival in the world — there were few communal events to point to this year. Instead, emphasis was on the hybrid, digital side of TIFF, which led to many moviegoers participating from home.

So in place of compiling the most exciting in-person events, entertainment reporters Eli Glasner and Jackson Weaver have compiled some of their top picks from the festival, with details of when you can expect to see them. 

I go to TIFF hoping to discover movies like this. It's a scrappy snapshot of a fading subculture, with Clifton Collins Jr. in a role as an aging jockey that, in a just world, would earn him Oscar attention. Director Clint Bentley takes his take time, framing faces to catch the fading light. Molly Parker and young Moises Arias support the story but know not to pull too hard on the reins. The final two minutes, the expression on Collins's face — sublime. 

Jockey opens Jan. 15, 2022. 

The opposite of Jockey to be sure, but Dune is also part of the festival experience — that glorious anticipation of The Big Thing. The good news is Dune, filtered through the prism of Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, did not disappoint. His vision for the worlds of novelist Frank Herbert is expansive, majestic and utterly, utterly serious. This is Stars Wars without a funny bone. But in its place is a tale of a messianic prince, warring empires and the implacable enemy — nature itself.  With only Part 1 of Villeneuve's proposed series available, the narrative lacks closure, but what a sumptuous beginning.  

Dune will be in theatres Oct. 22.