Toronto International Film Festival 2022

In the twilight of World War II, a solitary prospector (Jorma Tommila) strikes a rich vein of gold in the wilderness of Lapland in Northern Finland. Making tracks with his new-found bounty for the nearest town, the man runs afoul of a retreating detachment of Nazi soliders led by an odious SS Obersturmführer (Aksel Hennie), who set their sights on claiming the gold for themselves. Unfortunately for these stormtroopers, this is no ordinary miner, but rather a mythic one-man army who epitomizes the quintessential Finnish concept of “sisu” — a white-knuckled form of courage and unimaginable determination in the face of overwhelming odds.

A bumbling Englishman and an uptight Israeli are desperate to get into the Gaza strip — “the safest place in the world” — when a virus breaks out, in this hilariously irreverent satire from British-Palestinian writer-director Basil Khalil.

When a mutant virus known as ARS breaks out in Israel, people are desperate to get out of the country. Among them are bumbling Englishman Michael (Stephen Mangan) and uptight Israeli Keren (Mouna Hawa), a wealthy couple who find themselves stranded amidst lockdown. Their only hope is to smuggle their way into the Gaza Strip, which, due to the separation wall, is ironically “the safest place in the world.”

With the help of some clumsy Palestinian hustlers, they make it to the other side, only to be stranded again thanks to the less than cunning plans of their hired hands. Much to the chagrin of his wife, Waleed (Adam Bakri), one of the hustlers, hides the unlikely refugees in their basement while he figures out the next move. However, once news of the couple hits the media, he has to come up with a great escape — and quickly — in order to keep them and his own family safe. Shacked up, with their mutual survival intertwined, this motley crew have to go from being at each other’s throats to making it out alive together — all while evading the watchful eye of Hamas.

The latest from Stéphane Lafleur (Tu dors Nicole) balances absurdist humour with poignant reflection on the human condition as it follows the subjects of behavioural research — and the astronauts they mirror — in advance of the first manned mission to Mars.

Stéphane Lafleur’s first feature since the 2014 Cannes hit and TIFF selection Tu dors Nicole, Viking is ample proof that the director’s distinctive take on the human condition is as singular as ever — his empathy for those on the outside looking in and his flair for absurdist images are wonderfully present.

Viking places Lafleur’s sensibility in a decidedly rich and weird milieu, demonstrating how anomie and angst can be indivisible. As the film opens, David (Steve Laplante), the film’s ostensible hero, endures an intensely granular personality test. He’s part of a new initiative in which he and four others will mirror the behaviour of astronauts on the first manned flight to Mars, so that organizers of the mission can predict problems before they become insurmountable — or dangerous. (It recalls 2001: A Space Odyssey, but with people instead of a ship’s computer.)

Unfortunately, David, his colleagues, and the mission’s planners come up against the unpredictability of human emotions, complicated by the fact that the actual astronauts are drifting towards Mars. As the importance of their work and their decisions grows increasingly apparent, the film zeroes in on a key question: who is playing this odd game seriously, and how far do they intend to go?

In this prequel set decades before the grisly events of Ti West’s hit slasher X, Mia Goth returns as the future psycho-biddy Pearl, here a starry-eyed farm girl with a short fuse and a deadly ambition.

Shrewdly set in 1918, when war was raging in Europe and a deadly pandemic was stoking both prejudice and paranoia throughout the United States, Pearl sees Ti West return to the Texas ranch from his hit slasher X to tell the twisted origin story of Mia Goth’s memorable murderess.

Compellingly collapsing the eponymous character with that of their doppelgänger in the original film, Goth once again portrays a starry-eyed ingenue vying for silver-screen fame, but one whose youthful ambitions are ruled by a disturbed temperament that is quick to merciless violence. Where X paid tribute to the textures and tropes of 1970s horror, the prequel proceeds as a kind of perverse homage to The Wizard of Oz by way of a feminine psychodrama, as Pearl’s fledgling killer instincts emerge in resistance to the various obstacles that threaten to tread on her dreams.

In Bruges stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson reteam for this fable about two lifelong friends who reach an impasse, with alarming consequences for both. The latest from Oscar-winning writer-director Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri).

From the vibrant imagination of Oscar-winning writer-director Martin McDonagh comes this pitch-black comic fable of wounded friendship and the perils of petty grievance. Reuniting McDonagh with his ingenious In Bruges stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin is enchanting, poignant, and relentlessly entertaining.

Set in 1923 on the fictional island of Inisherin, just off Ireland’s west coast, our story begins with a slight. As he does every day, Pádraic (Farrell) calls on his pal Colm (Gleeson) to go for a pint. When he doesn’t answer the door and later refuses to sit with him at the pub, Pádraic is dumbfounded. “I just don’t like you anymore,” Colm explains. He’d rather save his energy for his newfound hobby, composing music, instead of wasting the days away with Pádraic. Unwilling to accept that their friendship is over, Pádraic continues confronting Colm, until Colm posits a gruesome ultimatum. The result of this standoff soon involves the whole village, with no one able to predict the lengths to which this feud will go.

In the Brazilian countryside, a family straining to care for their bedridden patriarch have their lives changed when a shady nurse offers a diabolical deal: put their elder to rest and host an Argentinian drug kingpin who urgently needs a place to hide.

Somewhere in the Brazilian countryside, married couple Irene (Maeve Jinkings) and Jairo (Rômulo Braga) and their nine-year-old son Jean (Jean Costa) live with Irene’s bedridden father in a precarious, stagnant situation, barely making ends meet out of their small charcoal production business.

Their strained lives change when a shady nurse offers them a diabolical deal: put their elder to rest and host instead an Argentinian drug kingpin who urgently needs a place to hide. Hesitant at first, Irene agrees and opens her house to the drug lord in distress, who expected a dramatically different experience for his forced exile. This surreal change in the family dynamic undoes their ties in unexpected ways. Their new-found income allows them to regain some power over their overwhelming realities, but actual hope will prove much harder for them to find.

In Iran’s spiritual capital, Mashhad, a dangerous and brutal cat-and-mouse-game unfolds between a serial killer and a journalist seeking justice.

In the light of day, Saeed (Mehdi Bajestani) is a worker, doting family man, veteran of the Iran–Iraq War, and a devout Shia Muslim. He appears to live simply with his wife Fatima (Forouzan Jamshidnejad) and two children in the exalted northeastern city of Mashhad, known as the spiritual capital of Iran. But by night, Saeed cruises his hometown’s seedy alleyways by motorcycle on a “holy” crusade to cleanse his nation of immorality. As part of his quest, he lures unwitting sex workers to their deaths and dumps their bodies, acts that come to feed a growing media frenzy. With no end in sight to the slayings, a Tehran-based journalist, Rahimi (played by Zar Amir Ebrahimi, who won Best Actress at Cannes 2022, where the film screened in competition), arrives on the scene, determined to uncover the killer’s identity. Soon, a dangerous cat-and-mouse-game is underway, where each player’s and onlooker’s own interpretation of justice casts a unique prism of doubt.

Midnight Madness alumni Jaume Balagueró (REC 2) and Álex de la Iglesia (Perdita Durango) team up to conjure cosmic horror within the concrete corridors of a cursed apartment complex on the outskirts of Madrid.

When go-go dancer Lucía (Ester Expósito) nicks a fortune in designer drugs from her mafia employers, the mobsters’ dogged pursuit forces her to seek sanctuary with her estranged sister Rocío (Ángela Cremonte) and niece Alba (Inés Fernández) in “The Venus,” a decrepit apartment complex on the outskirts of Madrid. As terrible, rotten, no-good luck would have it, Lucía soon finds herself sole guardian to little Alba after Rocío suddenly flies the concrete coop, unable to handle the supernatural stress of living in a monolith that is apparently also host to a malignant evil — one that invades its tenants’ waking nightmares. With the mafia’s wrath fast approaching — thanks to their use of occult wayfinder rituals — and strange celestial phenomena heralding an encroaching cosmic threat, Lucía must survive increasingly scary nights in the face of an uncertain and uncanny future.

Director Nandita Das (Manto) trains her sharp sociopolitical gaze on the gig economy, with this story about the trials and tribulations of a food-app delivery driver (played by Indian comedian Kapil Sharma).

After losing his job as a factory-floor manager during the pandemic, Manas (Kapil Sharma) becomes a driver for a food-delivery app called Zwigato. With a familiar rectangular backpack, he zips around Bhubaneswar on his motorcycle, steering through another day of inconvenient obstacles and impatient customers. To help make ends meet, his wife Pratima (Shahana Goswami) applies for a job as cleaning staff at a mall, brushing off the potential hassles of work life for an independent experience outside the home. Manas isn’t pleased, but it isn’t long before the strain of his daily grind begins to take a toll and he’s forced to confront his old fashioned ideas about being the breadwinner.

Best known in India as a comedian, Sharma shares a new side as Manas, with a grounded performance that finds the droll humour in his stress, constantly flung around the city by the app and its algorithm. The film’s realist style captures an everyday man who begins to see the maddening cycle of star ratings and delivery quotas for the hollow incentives they are, slowly opening up to ideas about workers’ rights and solidarity.

A seemingly simple taxi ride across Paris evolves into a profound meditation on the realities of the driver, whose personal life is in shambles, and his fare, an elderly woman whose warmth belies her shocking past.

Charles (Dany Boon) is a taxi driver in Paris, and he is having a very bad day. Some pressing personal debts are due, he’s in danger of losing his driver’s licence to numerous traffic infractions, and his marriage, like Charles himself, is strained to the point of snapping. A quick fare in the suburbs seems like an easy distraction.

Enter Madeleine (Line Renaud), an immaculately groomed 92-year-old woman, who informs Charles that the trip today will not be a direct one. She is moving into a care home and would like to make some stops along the way, predicting that this might be her last car ride through the city. Initially exasperated and grumbling, Charles is slowly lured in by her warm charm and directness, fascinated by the stories she wants to tell. Their ride takes them through the momentous locations of her life and we discover that she has had a shocking and very dramatic journey indeed.