# 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.
- Title: TIFF 2026: what Andrew Webster actually saw · The Verge
- Summary: 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…
- Keywords: tiff, film festivals, documentary, animation, streaming, technology, culture, 2026, Andrew, Webster, actually, saw
- Source: The Verge — https://theverge.com/entertainment/994834/tiff-2026-movie-reviews
- Author: Andrew Webster
- Published: 2026-09-14T17:30:00+00:00
- Read time: 2 min
- Topics: tiff, film festivals, documentary, animation, streaming, technology, culture
## 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.
## Key takeaway

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.