From The Verge · Andrew Webster · · 2m
TIFF 2026: what Andrew Webster actually saw
Daily dispatches from Toronto on a four-hour Musk doc, a hitman thriller born from Marvel's Blade collapse, and Laika's next stop-motion swing.
In brief
Daily dispatches from Toronto on a four-hour Musk doc, a hitman thriller born from Marvel's Blade collapse, and Laika's next stop-motion swing. TIFF is the earliest honest read on the next year in film, and the 2026 slate is leaning hard into documentary, genre, and streaming horror. Originally reported by The Verge.
Toronto is the tell
TIFF stacks features from around the world every year, and some become hits or awards contenders. The 2025 edition carried both Hamnet and Obsession.
One critic, thirty films
Covering a festival this size solo is close to impossible, so Andrew Webster watches as much as he can and files bite-sized reviews every single day.
The 2026 shortlist
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, a giant Elon Musk documentary, plus streaming series like Crystal Lake and Carrie.
Four hours on Elon
Alex Gibney, who made docs on Theranos and Steve Jobs, traces Musk from dot-com millionaire to gutting US government departments. Thorough, but light on revelations.
“taking a wood chipper”
Dismantling the myth
The film's first stretch shows how the mythology was built, then seeds doubt: ousted as PayPal CEO, and Tesla existed before he arrived.
Autopilot, then the crash
Gibney cuts bombastic autonomy claims against footage of a deadly Tesla autopilot crash. Ashley St Clair, a former MAGA influencer and mother to one of his children, sounds scared.
“Elon is a nuke.”
Blade's wreckage, rebuilt
Marvel's botched reboot lost Mahershala Ali and director Bassam Tariq. The two made a hitman thriller instead, and it lands harder than the superhero film would have.
Five films, one day
Day three ran from a drifting-car drama to a throwback horror flick built on a famous Japanese ghost story. Proof there are still new ideas in film.
Laika levels up
The studio behind ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls and Kubo and the Two Strings hits theaters next month with Wildwood, and the stop-motion looks impossibly smooth.
A week of dispatches
New work from Takashi Miike, Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Werner Herzog, Halloween-adjacent series from Netflix, Peacock and Amazon, and a brief review of every one.
The bottom line
TIFF is the earliest honest read on the next year in film, and the 2026 slate is leaning hard into documentary, genre, and streaming horror.
