The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is special in the way that it brings people together. From the simple people obsessed with movies, to the high-flying stars that descend upon that red carpet each day, to the journalists that flit around the streets of Toronto in search of great stories. It feels good to be a part of a culture that is bigger than yourself: an enclave that this year gifted us with new magic from the likes of David Cronenberg, Luca Guadagnino, Edward Berger, Sean Baker, Pedro Almodovar, and Halina Reijn. 

Sitting in those theatres watching new and old stars shine, I am reminded of Nicole Kidman’s famed 2021 AMC Theatres ad and the beautiful adage that at the movies we are not just entertained, “but somehow reborn.” Heartbreak does feel good in a place like this because that brief pain nudges us towards a better place: a realization, a transformation, maybe even salvation. 

What I saw at TIFF this year made me more sensitive to love, more hopeful for the human spirit, and appreciative of the complex struggles out of which many of these films were born. This festival is proof that every year is a great year for film if you look hard enough, because there are always, always people who are trying to make this world a better place however they can. 

The world is a better place with films that are good, nasty, and sometimes even morally corrupt. This year, I am grateful for films like Cronenberg’s disquietingly necrophilic fantasy The Shrouds, in which a grieving widower watches the body of his dead wife rot; Reijn’s Babygirl, in which Kidman plays a CEO in a BDSM-tinged affair with a junior employee; and especially Berger’s Conclave, in which the thesis of the men of the Catholic papacy is wickedly defamed. 

This issue is for the storytellers and story seekers, the romantics and the stoics. May these films and these reviews inspire you to go and see more. May the power of good film push you towards that better place where art may turn into alchemy, and grief turn into proof that love was here. 

That’s enough said. Enjoy our TIFF and Pop-Culture issue.