The Toronto International Film Festival continues to advance its commitment to Black voices through both established auteurs and emerging filmmakers. From DaCosta’s provocative reinterpretation of a literary classic to Latif’s psychological thriller, these works reflect storytelling that is bold, layered, and culturally resonant. As always, here at BGN we shed a light on those films. A select few will be reviewed here on the publication, so be on the lookout for more information on those titles.
The ensuing list includes films with a Black ensemble cast, Black experiences, and/or Black filmmakers that will screen at TIFF.
While the films may not exclusively have a Black ensemble cast, they each have one or more of those categories included on this list.
Hedda
Director: Nia DaCosta
Transplanted to mid-century England, Candyman director Nia DaCosta’s bold reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s play features a magnetic lead performance from Tessa Thompson (Passing) in a fresh, feminist game of power. The two now reunite after their last project Little Woods.
For more about the film go here
Youngblood
Director: Hubert Davis
Davis, who demonstrated his deep understanding of racism and resilience in the hockey world with Black Ice, which won the People’s Choice Documentary Award at the Festival in 2022.
Davis elicits compelling performances from a cast headed by Ashton James as Dean Youngblood. Conditioned by his father Blane (Blair Underwood) to match any slight with a greater show of aggression, Dean is a player whose potential for greatness is stymied by his volatility. A chance to play for the Hamilton Mustangs could be Dean’s last opportunity to course correct. But that means contending with toxic teammates and finding a way to work with Murray (Shawn Doyle, also at the Festival in Nika & Madison), the Mustangs’ skeptical coach. This relationship grows more fraught when Dean develops a connection with the bench boss’ daughter Jessie (Alexandra McDonald), a promising athlete herself.
For more about the film go here
The Eyes of Ghana
Director: Ben Proudfoot
In this love letter to cinema, we witness Ghanaian cameraman Chris Hesse, now in his 90s, pass on his legacy to the younger filmmaker Anita Afonu, captured by two-time Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot.
The Eyes of Ghana has an extraordinary team behind it. Afonu serves as a producer alongside Ghanaian-Canadian Nana Adwoa Frimpong and the Oscar-nominated Moses Bwayo. Oscar-nominated composer Kris Bowers provides the score. Serving as executive producers are Barack and Michelle Obama through their production company, Higher Ground.
For more about the film go here
Dinner With Friends
Director: Sasha Leigh Henry
Dinner with Friends brings viewers inside a fractured group of eight longtime friends who intermittently come together for dinner parties to share in the joys and pains of being adults today. Dinner With Friends offers a look inside this set of millennials, with full access to their group chat and a seat at their tables, begrudgingly hosted by anyone except for the Type A Joy.
For more about the film go here
Laundry
Director: Zamo Mkhwanazi
A young man struggles to find his own path and save his father and his family business under a violent and oppressive apartheid regime in Zamo Mkhwanazi’s stunning feature debut. Filmmaker Zamo Mkhwanazi’s quietly powerful debut Laundry crafts an intimate portrait of a Black family navigating the uneasy privileges and hidden costs of exemption within the violently unequal system of apartheid South Africa. The film is set in 1968, the same year that negative international opinion against apartheid fomented during the Summer Olympics but 26 years before the end of the institution.
For more about the film go here
My Father’s Shadow
Director: Akinola Davies Jr.
Winner of the Caméra d’Or Special Mention at Cannes, My Father’s Shadow is a stunning debut set in 1993 Lagos; a lyrical, emotionally resonant story of two brothers reconnecting with their distant father over a single, transformative day. Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù gives a quietly riveting performance as Folarin, a man both tough and tender, while real-life brothers Godwin Chiemerie Egbo and Chibuike Marvelous Egbo bring rawness, emotional depth, and grace to the screen. What emerges is not a story of easy reconciliation, but of slow recognition — the difficult work of seeing someone clearly, perhaps for the first time, and finding something in them more profound than expected.
For more about the film go here
Steal Away
Director: Clement Virgo
It tells the story of a pair of young women the film’s subtitle calls “two princesses.” The first is Fanny (Angourie Rice), a sheltered teenager whose knowledge of the world barely extends beyond the stately manor house belonging to her glamorous and magnanimous mother Florence (Lauren Lee Smith), which is located in a mysterious country that variously evokes occupied Europe, Algiers, and the Antebellum South.
Into her life comes Cécile (Mallori Johnson), a charismatic visitor who’s one of countless people seeking asylum from the conflicts that consume this alternate and highly stylized reality.
For more about the film go here
BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions
Director: Kahlil Joseph
In one of the year’s most auspicious feature debuts, celebrated artist and filmmaker Kahlil Joseph offers a galvanizing, shapeshifting exploration of Black history, identity, and possibility conceived as a cinematic experience that mirrors the sonic textures of an album. Celebrated artist and filmmaker Kahlil Joseph revisits and expands upon his eponymous two-channel “fugitive newscast” installation that was showcased at the 2019 Venice Biennale among other prestigious venues, in this galvanizing, shape-shifting exploration of Black history, identity, and possibility.
For more about the film go here
The Man In My Basement
Director: Nadia Latif
When a mysterious man (Willem Dafoe) approaches Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins) to rent his basement for a generous sum, Blakey is drawn into a chilling reality involving his own family’s hidden history in Nadia Latif’s adaptation of Walter Mosley’s novel. A bold debut, anchored by Dafoe and Hawkins’ intense performances, Latif’s The Man in My Basement could not be more timely. In an increasingly polarized and blinkered world, it’s incredibly powerful to see these two very different men confront evil in its purest form.
For more about the film go here
Diya
Director: Achille Ronaimou
In this surprising debut feature, Chadian director Achille Ronaimou crafts a relentless thriller where a man accused of killing a child must pay a blood debt. Dane is a man of good faith, led astray in spite of himself. And his wife, plucking up courage, is prepared to go to any lengths to support him. Unless another twist awaits them at the end of the road? Diya is a beautiful surprise not to be missed.
For more about the film go here
Memory Of Princess Mumbi
Director: Damien Hauser
Set in Umata, a futuristic African country, Memory of Princess Mumbi recounts a love triangle between a film director, an aspiring actress, and a prince. Drawing on modern technology to visually restore kingdoms, Hauser presents us with sumptuous settings while focusing on the human aspect: namely, the life and death of Princess Mumbi (touchingly portrayed by Shandra Apondi), as told by the filmmaker Kuve (a brilliant Abraham Joseph), who is threatened by his rival, the prince (played mischievously by Samson Waithaka), to whom the beautiful princess has been promised…
For more about the film go here
Origin: The Story of the Basketball Africa League
Directors: Richard Brown and Tebogo Malope
In 2019, a longtime dream for many became a reality when the National Basketball Association (NBA) committed to launching the Basketball Africa League (BAL). With 12 teams from the continent representing nations including Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, and Rwanda, the league would showcase the diversity of culture, talent, and love for basketball across Africa while providing a pathway for youth to play professionally in their own nation.
For more about the film go here
Under The Same Sun
Director: Ulises Porra
A Spanish settler, his Chinese companion, and a former Haitian soldier work together to bring high-quality silk production to early 19th-century Hispaniola, in this emotionally charged, politically resonant historical drama.
For more about the film go here
True North
Director: Michèle Stephenson
By turns searing and galvanizing, the latest from Michèle Stephenson (Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project) furthers the director’s ongoing investigation into the Black experience throughout the Americas and the historical pressures that shape it. Centering on student protests at Montréal’s Concordia University (then known as Sir George Williams University) in 1969, True North illuminates a tempestuous moment in Canada’s reckoning with its own racism — and reminds us of the lasting power of collective action.
For more about the film go here
Wasteman
Director: Cal McMau
David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus) delivers a gripping performance as a mild-mannered inmate whose hopes for an early release are jeopardized when his charismatic but menacing new cellmate (Tom Blyth) forces a choice between prison loyalty and freedom. At its heart is Taylor (David Jonsson, Rye Lane, TV’s Industry), a soft-spoken inmate serving a crushing sentence for a petty crime. He survives by becoming invisible: cutting hair, avoiding trouble, and occasionally numbing the monotony with pills, all the while clinging to faint memories of the son he hasn’t seen since infancy. Jonsson delivers a performance of remarkable restraint, each gesture seemingly shaped by years of swallowed pain.
For more about the film go here
The Christophers
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Ian McKellen and I May Destroy You’s Michaela Coel make a brilliant pairing in Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh’s incisively witty chamber comedy about art, commerce, and avarice. Having all but given up her own art practice, thirtysomething Lori (I May Destroy You’s Michaela Coel) divides her time between freelance art restoration and working the window of a food truck.
Her fortunes promise to change, however, when she’s approached by the estranged heirs (Jessica Gunning and James Corden) of renowned painter Julian Sklar (McKellen) with a tantalizing proposition: Lori is to apprehend a series of long-abandoned paintings from Sklar’s London home, complete the paintings using her masterful imitation skills, and receive a third of the profits from the sale of the paintings following the old man’s imminent death. Lori accepts the gig, infiltrating Sklar’s home under the pretense of becoming his new assistant, but the ruse quickly goes awry in a series of titillating twists and shifting allegiances.
For more about the film go here
The Fence
Director: Claire Denis
Within the walls of a private construction company in Africa, British supervisor Horn (Matt Dillon) hangs around with his colleague Cal (Tom Blyth) while expecting his wife Leonie (Mia McKenna-Bruce) to stop by for a visit. There is a sense of foreboding in the air — earlier that day a worker was killed in an accident. Soon, Alboury (Isaach De Bankolé), a local villager and brother of the deceased, arrives and demands to collect the body. Themes of racial inequality, exploitation, and masculinity weave in and out as each character starts to reveal hidden truths about the situations they find themselves in.
For more about the film go here
Orwell: 2+2=5
Director: Raoul Peck
George Orwell titled his dystopian 1949 novel 1984, but it feels utterly current in 2025 when phrases like “Big Brother is watching you” might refer to Big Government, Big Business, or Big Technology. Orwell is overdue for a fresh look and filmmaker Raoul Peck makes for an incisive and stirring guide. Peck has long put great writers at the center of his work, most notably in his Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro about James Baldwin.
For more about the film go here
Black Filmmakers with Movies at TIFF
Kahlil Joseph
Sasha Leigh Henry
Achille Ronaimou
Zamo Mkhwanazi
Damien Hauser
Akinola Davies Jr.
Tebogo Malope
Will Niava (short film program) – “Jazz Infernal”
Tyler Mckenzie Evans (short film program) – “Sea Star”
Kelly Fyffe-Marshall (short film program) – “Demons”
Carolyn Lazard (short film program) – “Fiction Contract”
Idris Elba (short film program) – “Dust to Dreams”
As TIFF celebrates its 50th anniversary, these voices stand at the center of a cultural moment that insists on visibility, complexity, and innovation; signaling that Black cinema is not just participating in the festival, but helping define its future. The 2025 Toronto International Film Festival runs September 4-14th.
