Wow, that was fast. Just like that, a whole year has passed and it is already time for another Toronto International Film Festival! The list of films that will be showing at TIFF this year has just been released and there are quite a number of amazing films that I can’t wait to see! The list is quite huge so I have decided to narrow it down a little and feature some of the films that I’m the most excited to see! I have been a volunteer at TIFF for the past two years and this year will mark my third year in a row as a volunteer! It has honestly been such a great experience every year and I can’t wait to see what this year brings! Here are the films that I’m the most excited about! You can click each movie still to learn more about the film!

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Two Lovers and a Bear

Montreal-born director Kim Nguyen’s first fiction film following his Oscar-nominated Rebelle is a hypnotic romance about two star-crossed lovers (Tatiana Maslany and Dane DeHaan) who find that even the icy expanses of the Arctic offer little refuge from their pasts.

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It’s Only The End of the World
(Juste la fin du monde)

Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, the new film from Quebecois wunderkind Xavier Dolan (Mommy) ropes in an all-star French cast (including Marion Cotillard, Vincent Cassel, Léa Seydoux and Nathalie Baye) for its tempestuous tale about the fraught reunion of a fractured family.

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Black Code

Toronto-based documentary filmmaker and cinematographer Nicholas de Pencier (Four Wings and a Prayer, Watermark) examines the complex global impact that the internet has had on matters of free speech, privacy and activism.

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ARQ

Orphan Black screenwriter Tony Eliott makes his feature directorial debut with this brain-twisting sci-fi thriller, about a husband and wife (The Flash’s Robbie Amell and Jessica Jones’ Rachael Taylor) living in a dystopic future who become trapped in a mysterious time loop — one that may have something to do with an ongoing battle between an omnipotent corporation and a ragtag band of rebels.

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Hello Destroyer

Jared Abrahamson (Fear the Walking Dead) plays a painfully shy but ruggedly capable enforcer on a minor-league hockey team who discovers the cutthroat nature of his locker-room “family,” in the forceful first feature from Canadian director Kevan Funk.

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Mean Dreams

Two teens in a small rural community seek solace from their dark pasts and troubled home lives in a forbidden romance, in the powerful new film from Canadian director Nathan Morlando (Edwin Boyd – Citizen Gangster).

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Weirdos

Canadian master Bruce McDonald (Hard Core Logo, The Tracey Fragments) teams with veteran playwright and screenwriter Daniel MacIvor for this offbeat coming-of-age comedy-drama, about two Nova Scotian teens who hit the road in July 1976 accompanied by the laconic ghost of (the still-living) Andy Warhol.

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A Cool Sound From Hell

A striking record of hipster Toronto in the 1950s, Sidney J. Furie’s long-thought-lost second feature follows a bored young man who kicks his middle-class destiny to the curb and plunges into the Hogtown netherworld of jazz, sex and narcotics.

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Nocturnal Animals

Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal and Armie Hammer headline the second feature from director Tom Ford (A Single Man), about a woman who is forced to confront the demons of her past as she is drawn into the world of a thriller novel written by her ex-husband.

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La La Land

An ambitious jazz pianist (Ryan Gosling) and an aspiring actress (Emma Stone) fall in love while pursuing their dreams of stardom, in this dazzlingly stylized homage to the classic Hollywood musical from Whiplash director Damien Chazelle.

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Bleed For This

Miles Teller and Aaron Eckhart star in this biopic of former world champion boxer Vinny Paz, who struggles to return to the ring after an accident leaves him severely injured.

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Loving

Jeff Nichols (Mud) directs Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga in the true story of Richard and Mildred Loving, who waged a decade-long legal battle that led to the overturning of the state of Virginia’s law prohibiting interracial marriage.

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Snowden

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in this real-life political thriller from Oscar winner Oliver Stone, co-starring Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Timothy Olyphant and Nicolas Cage.

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The Edge of Seventeen

Oscar nominees Hailee Steinfeld and Woody Harrelson star in this hilarious, edgy and poignant coming-of-age tale about an endearingly witty but self-absorbed teen whose life goes into a tailspin after her older brother starts dating her best friend.

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A Monster Calls

Liam Neeson, Sigourney Weaver and Felicity Jones star in this adaptation of the award-winning children’s book by Patrick Ness, about a lonely young boy struggling with the imminent death of his terminally ill mother who is befriended by a friendly, shambling monster that arrives in his room nightly to tell him stories.

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The Magnificent Seven

An all-star cast — including Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lee Byung-hun and Peter Sarsgaard — saddles up for this blazing remake of the 1960 western classic from director Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer), about seven gunslinging mercenaries protecting a small community from a rapacious robber baron.

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Free Fire

Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, and Cillian Murphy star in the hotly anticipated new film by Ben Wheatley (High-Rise), about a weapons deal gone wrong that escalates into a manic, bullet-riddled stand-off inside an abandoned warehouse.

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The Girl With All The Gifts

A sweet little girl who may hold the key to a cure for the zombie virus that has decimated most of the world’s population escapes from a military compound and sets out to find her place in the world.

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Buster’s Mal Heart

A troubled man (Mr. Robot’s Rami Malek) on the run recalls the mysterious events that brought him to his present fugitive state, in the enigmatic, elliptical and moving second feature from director Sarah Adina Smith (Midnight Swim).