God Bless You, Mr Kopu may unfold like a darkly comic genre piece about ambition, desperation and the seductive promise of success, but beneath its increasingly twisted surface, writer-director Alex Liu is asking a more personal question: how much of yourself are you willing to surrender to become the person you think you’re supposed to…
Yeon Sang-ho has never needed monsters to expose the uglier parts of humanity. Even when working within horror, science fiction or apocalyptic spectacle, the filmmaker behind Train to Busan and Hellbound has remained fascinated by what people become when circumstances push them somewhere uncomfortable. Following Colony and The Ugly, Paradise Lost continues that fascination on…
Happiness is an easy concept to romanticise. We spend so much of our lives imagining the job, relationship or milestone that will finally make everything fall into place, only to discover that fulfilment rarely arrives as neatly as expected. That uncomfortable distance between the life we picture and the one we actually inhabit sits at…
At 155 minutes, and unfolding across three timelines that initially appear to have only the faintest connective tissue, La Bola Negra asks its audience to place an enormous amount of trust in directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi. For much of its first two hours, their sweeping queer epic can feel deliberately elusive, moving between…
Being encouraged to recognise your own brilliance can prove a cruel lesson when the person doing the encouraging preferred you when that brilliance remained safely beneath theirs. That uncomfortable contradiction sits at the centre of Niki Byrne’s The Julia Set, an academically minded coming-of-age drama that doesn’t rewrite the formula but finds enough intelligence and…
There’s something inherently dangerous about satire when the person holding the knife is willing to turn it back on themselves. That tension sits at the centre of Everybody Wants to F*ck Me, the provocative new film from writer-director Jonathan Schey, which arrived at the Toronto International Film Festival with Taron Egerton stepping into the uncomfortable…
Jonathan Schey’s Everybody Wants to F*ck Me is the kind of film that seems determined to make you laugh before making you question exactly why you’re laughing. What begins as a filthy comedy about modern dating gradually mutates into something darker, stranger and considerably more uncomfortable. Taron Egerton plays Adam, a London gallery worker who…
There’s an agonising distinction between wanting to live and wanting to have lived. Elsinore, Simon Stone’s deeply affecting account of the final chapter in Scottish actor Ian Charleson’s life, understands that difference intimately. Faced with a body increasingly betraying him, Charleson isn’t simply fighting for more time. He wants the time he has left to…
Films centred around degenerative illness are often walking an unenviable tonal tightrope. Push too hard towards inspiration and the characters can become vessels for an uplifting message; lean too heavily into suffering and their lives become defined entirely by their diagnosis. Onwards and Sideways understands that living with Parkinson’s can be frightening, exhausting, frustrating and,…
Onwards and Sideways may begin with a diagnosis, but its beating heart lies in everything that diagnosis cannot define. Oscar-nominated director John Madden’s tender, unexpectedly funny drama stars Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney as Tony and Emma, two strangers diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the same clinic on the same morning. What initially binds them…
Diagnosed with the same degenerative disease, at the same clinic, on the same day, Tony (Rhys Ifans) and Emma (Laura Linney) may suddenly find themselves bound by Parkinson’s, but Onwards and Sideways is far more interested in everything that makes their experiences entirely their own. For Oscar-nominated director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love, Proof), that…
At a certain point in a long-term relationship, “When are you having kids?” seems to stop being considered an intrusive question and instead becomes accepted small talk. Marriage apparently isn’t enough of a milestone. Happiness isn’t enough of an answer. There must be a next step, and for Annie and Aaron, the wonderfully lived-in couple…
Rebel Wilson clearly has an enormous amount of affection for the girl groups that soundtracked her formative years. Spice Girls, All Saints, Destiny’s Child and The Pussycat Dolls all hover over Girl Group, a bright, loud and relentlessly enthusiastic musical comedy that wants to bottle the particular euphoria of watching a group of women harmonise,…
Technology may have finally achieved what decades of law enforcement couldn’t: put expert pickpocket Harry Lehman out of business. Nobody carries cash anymore. Phones can be tracked. Credit cards can be cancelled before you’ve even made it to the next subway stop. For the wonderfully weathered criminal at the centre of Noah Segan’s The Only…
Martin McDonagh has long been fascinated by men who would sooner insult, maim or murder one another than admit they actually care. Friendship in his films is rarely expressed through anything resembling conventional affection; it arrives through arguments, threats, profanities and, occasionally, the reluctant acknowledgement that losing someone might hurt considerably more than expected. It…
If the modern media landscape increasingly feels like a race to see who can shout the loudest, frighten the most people, or manufacture the most irresistible headline, Ink is an electrifying reminder that none of this happened overnight. In adapting James Graham’s acclaimed stage play, director Danny Boyle traces such sensationalism back to the smoke-filled…
Charm can be its own form of menace in God Bless You, Mr Kopu, the feature debut of Tongan Kiwi writer-director Alex Liu, a darkly funny, increasingly sinister thriller that uses the seductive promise of success to explore power, race and belonging. Mafu (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is a struggling Tongan immigrant whose fortunes seemingly change when…
Community theatre is an inherently strange little ecosystem. It’s a place where people with wildly different levels of talent, ambition and self-awareness come together and, for a few fleeting nights, treat a modest suburban stage as if they’re opening on Broadway. For some it’s a hobby. For others it’s a calling. And for the particularly…
Hollywood has always been particularly adept at selling dreams whilst quietly destroying the people trying to live them. In Misty Green, Chris Rock turns that contradiction into something funny, furious and increasingly uncomfortable, crafting a showbusiness satire that isn’t afraid to let its laughter curdle. Rock’s latest effort as writer-director centres on Misty Green (Rosalind…
Family can make us feel safest, but it can also reopen wounds we thought had long since healed. That tension sits at the heart of River, the nerve-shredding feature debut from writer-director Joshua Giuliano, which celebrated its world premiere at Midnight Madness at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Jane Levy, Jessica Rothe and Max…
Sometimes horror really doesn’t need to be complicated. Give us a handful of characters we care about, isolate them somewhere they shouldn’t be, introduce something terrifying and let nature take its course. Joshua Giuliano understands this remarkably well with River, his feature directorial debut and a brutally efficient love letter to the kind of slasher…
Even if Jordan Firstman has never particularly been someone you’ve vibed with, Club Kid may completely rearrange your perception of him. Serving as writer, director and star of his feature filmmaking debut, Firstman initially seems determined to test that theory. His Peter Green is a New York club promoter whose existence is fuelled by late…
Following a Best Picture winner is no enviable task, but Siân Heder has never seemed particularly interested in taking the easy route. With Being Heumann, her first feature since CODA, the writer-director turns her attention to disability rights activist Judy Heumann and a landmark moment in American civil rights history, delivering a film that is…
Every September, Toronto briefly becomes the centre of the cinematic universe, and in 2026 The AU Review will once again be on the ground for the Toronto International Film Festival, taking in as much as humanly possible across 11 days of premieres, discoveries, red carpets and those inevitable scheduling clashes that force you to choose…
The Toronto International Film Festival has officially kicked its 2026 line-up into high gear, unveiling its Gala and Special Presentations slate – and if the opening announcement hinted at an awards-heavy year, this latest wave confirms TIFF is once again pulling together one of the year’s most exciting collections of international cinema. Following the previously…
The 2026 Toronto International Film Festival has expanded its Special Presentations line-up, unveiling another five films set to screen as part of this year’s festival. The latest additions continue TIFF’s tradition of showcasing some of the year’s most anticipated premieres, with new works from acclaimed filmmakers Rachel Morrison, Bassam Tariq, Benjamín Naishtat, Ben Shirinian, and…
The road to the Toronto International Film Festival has officially begun, with the first three films unveiled for TIFF’s 51st edition and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Siân Heder set to open this year’s celebration of cinema. Heder’s Being Heumann, based on the life of pioneering disability rights activist Judy Heumann and starring Ruth Madeley, has been…
A true story that proves reality is so often wilder than fiction, Roofman, from director Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine), details the life of Jeffrey Manchester, dubbed the “Roofman” due to his modus operandi of breaking into his target locations (mostly McDonald’s restaurants) through their roofs. After escaping prison and hiding out in a Toys “R”…
One of the most talked about titles out of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival was the biographical sports drama Christy from acclaimed Australian filmmaker David Michôd (Animal Kingdom) and starring Sydney Sweeney in the titular role, one that generated Oscar buzz out of the festival last month; you can read our review here, where we…
When it was revealed that Maude Apatow (daughter of filmmaker Judd Apatow and actress Leslie Mann) had helmed her first feature film, and one that starred the likes of Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Nico Parker (daughter of actress Thandiwe Newton and filmmaker Ol Parker) to boot, the “nepo baby”…
