TIFF 51: Jury of Two, Part I
Tuesday, September 29, 2026 at 10:00PM Let’s take another break from those endless TIFF reviews, with Cláudio Alves and Eurocheese appointing themselves juries to choose the best of the fest, beyond Best Actress chatter.
I AM ROCKY was the People’s Choice Award runner-up at TIFF, just behind LA BOLA NEGRA. Will its popularity be reflected in Cláudio and Eurocheese’s picks?
EUROCHEESE: Having covered our favorite leading ladies at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, Cláudio and I will be naming our favorites in a number of categories. To start things off, let’s stick with the actressexual theme.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Many actresses were considered for this category, and there were some formidable runners-up. Adia matched her on-screen father, Mahershala Ali, in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, where Cláudio was right to call out the intensity of their scenes together. Olivia Colman may have a small part in Elsinore that registers mostly as a potential detractor, but of course she still finds enough notes in it to make her scenes with Andrew Scott sing. I also appreciated Gemma Chan’s loving but inadequate parenting in Josephine. In the end, though, there was a clear top choice…
Penélope Cruz is an iconic diva in LA BOLA NEGRA.
Penélope Cruz in La Bola Negra! Even in limited screen time, Cruz storms into the film, almost unrecognizable at first, in a musical number that somehow makes her the sexiest presence in a film driven by male longing and beauty. She immediately pivots to the most poignant scene of La Bola Negra, arguably the source of a primary character’s decision, inexorably shaping his trajectory. She then closes out riding on a tank while gliding through another fabulous musical number – cinema! Cruz was already my Supporting Actress pick of the year for her incredible work in The Invite, and I genuinely hope she is our first actress in Academy history to be nominated twice in the same category. Of all the memorable performances in La Bola Negra, hers is my favorite.
CLÁUDIO: I'll co-sign your praise for Cruz, Adia, and Chan, adding that the latter does much of her work with a script that clearly loses interest in the character at hand, privileging the father's perspective on Josephine's dilemma to a dramaturgically unsound degree. Anyway, I have a lot of performances I'd like to mention before announcing my pick, which, truth be told, might change if you ask me again a week from now, as films settle in the mind with some aging better than others.
As far as honorable mentions go, Alice Bailey Johnson is probably the closest to a supporting presence in Tender Loving Care's main quartet. The film is also rich in one-scene wonders, including Tilly Vosburgh and Amanda Lawrence. Another actress providing great work with very little screen time is Syra McCarthy in Josephine, appearing in two pivotal moments and allowing us to see how a happy young woman can be forever changed by one monstrous violation. Caitriona Balfe has never been better on the big screen than she is in A Long Winter, playing up the performativity of a desperate housewife in the 1950s Rocky Mountains, her sadness both on full display and concealed behind a glamorous smokescreen from the perspective of her adoring queer son. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi makes for a Sapphic spin on Mephisto, all queer provocation dressed in killer giallo fits. She's having a lot of fun with her part in The Spiral, tasteless as it might be, and you can feel it through the screen.
Marie Bunel must play an antagonistic figure against Efira's idealist nursing home director in All of a Sudden, asking for confrontation and even our dislike without betraying the film's rule of empathy. During a conversation staged between the two women on a public forum, the way Bunel shows beats of vulnerability, recognition suddenly connecting these ideological adversaries, is something sublime. Adriana Paz plays a similar dynamic in Ashes, a maternal figure confronting her failures through her daughter's eyes. Catherine Deneuve is another mother in Gentle Monster, though she offers needed support and some harsh truths without ever using her star power to steal the film away from Seydoux - I wish she had stolen the film away from director Marie Kreutzer, though. Finally, a round of applause to two striking supporting turns in two of the year's buzziest Spanish films not called La Bola Negra, Marina Foïs in The Beloved and a never-better Aitana Sánchez-Gijón in Bitter Christmas.
In BEN'IMANA, Isabelle Kabano is the persistence of memory, the refusal of forgetting.
Today, my vote goes to Isabelle Kabano in Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo's Ben'Imana. As the Rwandan state tries to implement "forgive and forget" as policy to move on and rebuild the nation after genocide, Kabano's Suzane is one of the survivors who refuses to participate in the charade, even though her sister, a witness to this woman's brutalization, has taken it upon herself to spread the government's message as gospel. It's hard to sustain a characterization through such heightened notes of outrage and constant fury, but Kabano makes it seem easy. Moreover, she makes it engaging, as if to refute flat readings of her character before the viewers can weaponize them against her, leaving the audience uncertain to the end about how to resolve the unresolvable.
For our next category, let's jump to another The Film Experience favorite.
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
First of all, a shout-out to the great contemporary costume design that will never earn the recognition it deserves. Stuff like the blurring barriers between the artifice of the stage and the dream-like madness of an actress' skewed reality in The Debut, the militant religious pageantry of Your Mother Your Mother, and the sheer tackiness on display all across The Spiral. I want to commend La Bola Negra and Coward for their plays with gender norms within bellicose historical milieus, and call attention to how much A Long Winter and Woman Unknown don't call attention to their exquisite period recreations, apart, perhaps, from the latter's climactic ensemble of scarlet guilt in the shape of a frock and black gloves to match a person's transformation into commodity.
My winner here is Clarissa, alternating between past and present without losing itself in notions of nostalgia or a kitsch dream of bygone youth. The contrasts are there, just as they are for the classes in Lagos' heavily hierarchized society, whose distance is geographic, economic, and sartorial. Eniola Dawodu, whose work readers might now know from Dee Rees' Pariah, is rich in sensual textures and exquisite textiles, imbuing every frame with visual interest. Not only among the wealthy, either, for beauty can be found even when luxury goods are beyond one's reach. I wanted to reach out and touch so many frames in this haptic marvel of a film.
Which film's fashions caught your eye and earn your vote, my friend?
EUROCHEESE: No surprise - Clarissa is my winner as well. If I could only reward the film in one category, it would be for those lovely outfits.
Nigerian fashion is on beautiful display, yet always character-specific, in CLARISSA.
I would like to mention La Bola Negra's range of costuming, especially with Carlos' timeline particularly standing out for its air of expense, helping the viewer easily track the story's timeline, along with the drag queen-esque patriotism of Cruz's Nene. It's insane how expensive that film looks. Coward's troop of performers not only plays with gender,, but the creativity born from their limited materials also feeds our interest in Valentin Campagne's Francis, the enigmatic character enticing our sheltered leading man. I also wanted to mention Club Kid. Though not the type of costuming that's likely to be noticed during awards season, it evokes its party scene and gives us a flavor of the world Jordan Firstman wants to create before fatherhood changes his priorities. Plus, if nothing else, Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! builds a specific dreamworld in no small part due to its over-the-top costuming sequences.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Some of the same players here as well, though this is where I will call out A Long Winter for its landscape shots, showing the isolation experienced by its characters. So much of the film is watching the skyline, waiting for something to happen. Clarissa has its own poetic aesthetic, where so many shots are strikingly gorgeous. Unsurprisingly, Almodóvar's Bitter Christmas, while not among his most splendorous films, this minor work still captures the director’s signature flair and, once again (a common theme this year), helps us distinguish between storylines. The imagery in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, playing with light and darkness from scene to scene, stands out as one of the film's strongest assets, highlighting its protagonist's heavens and hells. Danny Boyle's Ink also delivers flash and hype in exactly the way you might expect from him, though, unfortunately, the film is more about flash than substance. Given how it stands out, though, it wouldn't surprise me if it lands in the Oscar conversation.
Above all though, the cinematography in La Bola Negra stood out as being one of the most remarkable of the year. While I won't spoil sequences late in the film, the fictional nature of Carlos' storyline allows for memorable shots that will certainly be among the most beautiful cinematic images I’ll see this decade. The spinning capture of Carlos and Nene's dance sequences, the close-ups as Sebastián holds his hand just above Rafael's skin, the black-and-white sequences looking like classic photographs come to life - La Bola Negra is one of the most picturesque historical epics I've seen. And while I understand The Odyssey will be tough competition in this category, I'd love to see cinematographer Gris Jordana take the Oscar home.
CLÁUDIO: I certainly agree about the beauty of Clarissa's sensualist cinematography, and feel purpose behind the digital flatness that Almodóvar invokes for much of Bitter Christmas, projecting the ghost of his greatest hits while making us feel a soullessness within. I must also concede that there's plenty of greatness in the mountain vistas that André Turpin captures in A Long Winter, though similar sights in Growth of the Soil might be even more impressive. I know Look Back takes a lot of cues from the previous anime adaptation of its manga source material, but Senzo Ueno does some things with the quality of light that justify this live-action version all on their own.
Now, I must ask for the readers' forgiveness. Because I can be a tad deceitful every year, saving some TIFF watches for my putatively online NYFF coverage. Some titles that might end up being reviewed under that umbrella but deserve mention when talking about the best cinematography achievements screened in Toronto include such gems as La Gradiva, where Marine Atlan and Pierre W. Mazoyer invoke the ghosts of Pompeii, of Rossellini and Visconti, without ever feeling disengaged from their teenage protagonists' subjectivity or the sheer beauty of the Neapolitan setting. Their achievement is almost impressionistic, like what Everytime pulls out for its last act, though the best shot in the whole movie comes when DP Gregory Oke, very early in the narrative, tells a whole tragedy through a wandering telescopic lens. I also have plenty of love for Marius Panduru's use of color and light in Schanelac's precise staging of My Wife Cries.
Two siblings consider the land in very different terms throughout DOUBLE FREEDOM.
Finally, my winner is Cobi Migliora's return to the same places and faces he had already shot, a quarter-century ago, in Lisandro Alonso's La Libertad. Double Freedom won't be nearly as influential as its predecessor, but I find it more fascinating for the dialogues it establishes across time. It's also incredibly gorgeous and a fantastic exercise in revisiting the same landscape not once, but twice, in the same film, and seeing it through different eyes each time. From a materialist, matter-of-fact assessment of the land as a place and resource to a more lyrical, tactile and sentimental vision of it. I can scarcely describe the colors in this one, or how they made me feel in the dark cloister of the movie theater.
To keep things visual, let's stay close to the topic of pretty things.
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
I have less to say about this category because my winner feels so self-evident. Honorable mentions go to the houses in Diary of a Mad Old Man, Djinn Wedding, Fjord, and Stuffed, so full of personality and character, sometimes in reflection of the people who live within them, sometimes in soul-devouring opposition. I also got a kick out of the Catholicism built into La Bola Negra's visions of Spain across time. Having Sebastián escape from his village's massacre by climbing on the prostrate figure of a fallen Saint Sebastian is a bit too much overt symbolism for my liking, but it sure makes for a memorable image.
Still, there was no beating Minotaur, a feat of architectural storytelling for the ages. Production designers Andrey Ponkratova and Masha Slavina, set decorator Aivars Dambis, and whoever did the location scouting deserve as much credit as the auteurs of this Femme Infidèle remake as director Andrey Zvyagintsev and Claude Chabrol before him. For the first half of this Cannes Grand Prix winner, I kept wondering about how uncomfortable the spaces made me feel, all huge windows without curtains and open-concept homes whose cavernous minimalism feels antithetical to the keeping of secrets.
But it's not just the home. It's the entire world of Minotaur, its Soviet-era apartment blocks with balconies facing inward into interior courtyards, inviting the intrusive eye of neighbors. It's the mirrored surfaces of fancy restaurants that feel as if they were designed so you can see each guest from as many angles as possible. By contrast, the halls of power have large windows, too, but curtains and high wood paneling keep them from giving onlookers something to spy on, offering the privilege of privacy in an environment conceived for vigilance. It's paranoia distilled into scenography.
Every space has a story to tell in MINOTAUR, most of them tragedies.
EUROCHEESE: Minotaur is a solid choice, but at the risk of becoming a broken record, I have to go with La Bola Negra here as well. My apologies - I didn't realize it would be sweeping so many categories! The film is a visual feast, and I hope the team behind it finds the recognition they deserve this season. I appreciated the memorable sets for Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother's most dramatic scenes and I'd argue Being Heumann's set up, including the logistics of the sit-ins and the primitive encampment, gives a strong sense of place.
BEST EDITING
Despite its long running time, there's a reason All of a Sudden never felt like it was overstaying its welcome - the patient pacing of the film is as welcoming as its central characters. It's in sharp contrast to a film like Ink, where rushing between moments certainly stands out, but makes itself a bit too evident. Touching again on multiple timelines, La Bola Negra comes together beautifully, but Clarissa floating seamlessly between storylines feels even more effective. Despite Coward's insistence on spending so much time on its protagonist's face, the setting of the central relationship's ups and downs was always satisfying. The ticking clock always feels present in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, fueling that film towards its inevitable conclusion, and the pacing of Tangles kept the audience drawn into each step as the characters address their family crisis.
If any film deserves love for its breakneck pacing pulling off a magic trick, though, it's Robert Nassau's perfect calibration of The Debut. The comedy spins out in one unexpected direction after another, yet never loses the audience tonally. I was thrilled by the rollercoaster The Debut took me on, and honestly can't wait to ride it again when it hits theaters.
CLÁUDIO: You raise an interesting point about the editing prowess of films that run longer than what one would consider a compact runtime. Often, such projects are accused of needing an editor, as if the art of cutting a picture were simply about minimizing the time a viewer spends in front of the screen. All of a Sudden, like Drive My Car before it, needs its contemplation and patient, some would say overgenerous, rhythms to work as well as it does. The film constantly asks us to pause, to look, to regard the other, and to wait until we recognize our shared humanity. Its internal clock, moreover, the meter of its observations, aligns with these ideas. And, in this alignment, we encounter a more holistic viewing experience than a swifter picture would offer its spectator.
There's also plenty to say about how editing affects tone, even in these gigantic-sized propositions we often find in film festival programs. Mariano Llinás' The Life of Jorge Luis Borges was the funniest thing I watched at TIFF, and much of its odd hilarity comes from the editing strategies that structure, at the macro and micro levels, its five-and-a-half-hour runtime. It's very conspicuous how some superficially portentous bits of information are just thrown off-handedly at you, while we'll spend an extended period of time shitting on an American city Llinás seems to have a vendetta against. Or how the academic appreciation of an annotated document can push and pull between serious study and a catty one-liner, shooting a stray at a lesser author than the one being ostensibly studied in this new delight from El Pampero Cine.
LA GRADIVA flows like a dream, a memory that's starting to fade but still full of emotion.
And yet, after all this praise toward long movies, I must concede that my vote for Best Editing came down to Salvador Reyes Zúñiga's cutting of Flies, Tender Loving Care's Tania Reddin, and my eventual winner, which runs for a demure 145 minutes. As assembled by Guillaume Lillo, La Gradiva seems to be a film that shouldn't work at many junctures. Its lyricism falling into impressionism, falling into a portrait of teenage ennui, falling into a city symphony for Naples as echoed through the ghosts of its antiquity and recently deposed aristocracy feels like the kind of volatile solution you find in a disorganized lab, prone to explode on you and take your face along with it. And yet, it flows so beautifully, sneaking up on you and never striking one as unnecessarily indulgent. I love when a film keeps me on my toes, shapeshifting, almost dancing along a choreography they know by heart, but I am still learning in the moment.
Since I'm so in the mood to talk about rhythm and dance and whatnot, we might as well turn to the sonic side of things.
BEST MUSIC
Now, I know there were plenty of original songs at TIFF, even some original musicals like a play within a film in The Debut or the bizarro romance of Stuffed, but I think we can forego separating these achievements across different categories. Songs, score, well-utilized pre-existing music - it all belongs here. And on that latter point, The Man I Love deserves a special prize for being a better playlist than it is a movie, even if I could do with a little less Vivaldi.
Congo Boy is all about music and its final showstopper is as effective as anything in Eisenberg's fake musical comedy classic. The Violinist wouldn't work without Ricky Ho's score to justify its odd obsessions and distract the viewer from the lousy animation on display. Alberto Iglesias is sublime at blending a hollow, passionless pastiche of his previous work for Almodóvar with a more disquieting turn into horror music at key moments. Michael Abels' compositions for Hope and Son Lux's work in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother are sublime, even if they feel a tad derivative of both artists' previous, better works. And I have to mention Tender Loving Care again, even if I don't understand how Gary Yershon is credited as composer, since he died before Hard Truths even hit screens. I suspect Leigh and company cobbled the score from unused pieces for their many previous collaborations. The director's cinema might have outlived Dick Pope's lensing, but it seems we'll never have to imagine a new Mike Leigh joint without Yershon's tunes making themselves heard across it.
Is "La Nieve," from LA BOLA NEGRA, our Best Original Song frontrunner?
Oh hell, you know it was coming. My vote goes to La Bola Negra, with works by Raül Refree, Judelina and Guitarricadelafuente. Even just thinking about the music in that movie transports me back to the emotional state it left me in at first glance and listen. Do you agree? Is this another Eurocheese victory for La Bola Negra, or have you decided to unexpectedly spread the wealth?
EUROCHEESE: First, let me give a second round of applause to Son Lux, agree on the merits of The Man I Love's music over the movie itself and call out the original songs that add touches of humor to The Debut's community theater aesthetic. The upbeat throwbacks from Wild Horse Nine and the sweeping score of Elsinore deserve callouts here too. But yes, you called it - ask me in a decade and the score I'll remember from this year will no doubt be from La Bola Negra.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Let's round out our Part 1 with the supporting side for the men. I'd like to highlight screenwriter Paul Mayhew-Archer's memorable turn as a member of the Parkinson's support group in Onwards and Sideways, who shows the progression of the disease, addressing his own deterioration with determined humor and standing out among his cast. If the film started receiving more notice, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw him show up as a critic favorite. Of the smaller roles in La Bola Negra, Miguel Bernardeau stood out for his depiction of a captured soldier struggling to find purpose in going on (and I promise I'm not just bringing him up because the film lingers on his beauty). We can debate his placement, but Paul Jesson gives one of the year's most memorable performances in Tender Loving Care, a turn I hope will not be forgotten as awards season moves forward. Channing Tatum gets much more to do than his onscreen wife in Josephine - another question of lead vs. supporting - but his stubborn resistance to address real-life consequences felt grounded in his guilt in a way that impressed me.
Ultimately, though, I have to land on Paul Giamatti in The Debut. This character could easily have veered into J.K. Simmons in Whiplash territory, but instead, as his theater director pushes Julianne's housewife outside of her comfort zone, he remembers what he loves about his own profession. This gives his character heft and anchors the film, showing us the importance of pursuing what we love and how it can inspire those around us.
THE DEBUT might just earn Paul Giamatti an overdue Academy Award.
This storyline will especially speak to the Academy, some of the greatest artists of our time, now looking to bolster talent that reminds them of their own work. I would have given Giamatti a Best Actor Oscar three years ago and I would love to see him pair with Moore as they take trophies home this season. With the soul he manages to bring to The Debut, I think it's possible.
CLÁUDIO: Since you've veered this "supporting" actor talk into such big roles, I'll try to set a contrarian example. Nevertheless, let me start my honorable mentions with a man the camera treats as the film's lead before he disappears for about two hours. Syuleyman Alilov Letifo makes for a fantastic fake-out lead in Grisebach's The Dreamed Adventure, keeping us on our toes and in a perpetual state of doubt regarding his intentions. In the same film, Stoicho Kostadinov deserves mention for rendering the archetypal mob boss as a character of enigmatic dimension, with his final conversational pas de deux with Yana Radeva among the cinematic year's highlights.
From criminals to scene stealers, Eldar Isgandarov is a comedic revelation in both The Debut and Club Kid. Vincent Lindon is a bit one-note, but his anti-woke corporate devil is a sight to behold in Brizé's Good Little Soldier, pushing his collaboration with the director to a register of broad satire I didn't know they could achieve. Im Hyun-sik's diarrhea story could have derailed Hope entirely, but instead proves its tonal elasticity and staunch commitment to earnestness amid the madness. I also have a lot of fondness for Nani Moretti's warm paternalism in his own It Will Happen Tonight, and Radu Jude's take on an immigrant father beset by inexplicable tragedy in The Unknown. Isn't it lovely when great directors are also excellent actors?
Tom Sturridge has a more substantive role in The Man I Love, but he still feels securely supporting. He's also this film's version of Ben Whishaw from Passages, endlessly supportive but not without his resentments, failures and furies, tarnishing that shiny surface of devotion at every chance he gets. Patrick Criado is a lot of fun in Bitter Christmas, a himbo extraordinaire who might have more depth than his partner recognizes. To complete the triptych of sexy men stuck in relationships with someone who can't really see them, I must mention Zo In-sung in Possible Love, though he might veer too closely to co-lead territory for my liking. The way he transforms and twists the tonal and power balance at the end of Lee Chang-dong's latest is something to behold, especially when it comes to the bathroom scene, when the actor lets out what might be the ugliest laughs ever recorded.
It's difficult to look away from Zon In-sung in POSSIBLE LOVE.
Alas, it all comes down to the father figures (George Michael starts playing in the background), be they nurturing or as far from it as the human mind can conceive. There's Ebon Moss-Bachrach's mountain man pragmatism soured into petty cruelty in A Long Winter, only to pull back for a glimpse of a parent's softer side at the very last second. There's Kyōzō Nagatsuka, who shines as brightly in his quiet, grandfatherly warmth in All of a Sudden as he does when commanding the stage for that film's polyglot one-man show scenes. There's Edouard Baptiste as Marie Madeleine's uncompromising evangelical preacher whose hatred of sin puts him in direct conflict with his progeny, a young man discovering himself in the company of liberated sex workers and the local queer community. His near-silent performance when facing the prodigal son at the end is soul-shattering.
Finally, my winner, for now, is Kim Eung-soo in Bedford Park, for all the reasons I already described in my review. When you're sharing a film with two young actors straining to prove themselves, ready to deliver thorny, complex characterizations like those director Stephanie Ahn pulls out of Moon Choi and Son Suk-ku, it's miraculous that he's still the undisputed MVP.
Tune in next time for more categories, such as Best Actor and Casting, as well as Cláudio's endless honorable mention lists and Eurocheese's unwavering passion for La Bola Negra.
Reader Comments (7)
Penelope Cruz being the first double acting nominee in a single category would be AMAZING. She is consistently so good in her projects. The Invite seems to be holding that momentum to get a nice handful of those big prize nominations, and I can't see Wilde getting in Actress without Cruz in Supporting Actress. I haven't seen La Bola Negra but I'm well aware of its reception.
Shoot, if The Bride had been better received, we'd have three strong performances in Supporting to consider from Cruz. Her lady detective act is fantastic. Alas, not everyone fell for one of my all time favorite Frankenstein adaptations, so I ain't counting on The Bride getting in anywhere, even if Makeup and Hairstyling should be a no-brainer.
I'm not against a Cruz double-dip, but absolutely NO supporting actress this year tops Gillian Anderson in CAMP MIASMA baby!!
I am sure Cruz is fantastic in both films but the fact she may take a slot from another actress by double dipping doesn't sit well with me,what if you give the performance of your career in a small film and can't get past the finish line because a huge star is hogging 2 places.
Ugh, I hope Paul Giamatti can get his Oscar this year!! The Debut is my most-anticipated film of the year right now and I was rooting for him to take it home for The Holdovers. I hope he can pull it off! He's fantastic.
@Philip H. - Barring an unseen performance soaring to the top of the contenders list, it's totally Giamatti's to lose this year. The only performance I was waiting on before comfortably declaring him the clear frontrunner was John Goodman in Digger, and now that that's been seen, there is no way he's winning based on the reviews, and it's unlikely he'll even be nominated. Paul Giamatti might very well steamroll the season.
@Edwin
(Mostly) unseen and contending? Strong (The Social Reckoning)
Seen & contending: Oyelowo (Clarissa); Norton (The Invite); Pearce (Ink); Gisondo (Primetime); Rockwell (Wild Horse Nine); Leguizamo & Pattinson (The Odyssey)
It's all about narrative as well as respect by your peers film being liked across the board and having been seen as snubbed or due Giamatti has all of these plus he recently lost.
Oyelowo - Not in a million years
Norton - Cruz and Wilde have the buzz
Pearce - doubtful the film won't be a big player
Gisonodo - to unknown
Rockwell - won recently and Malkovich is the place to reward it
Leguizamo and Pattinson - may cancel each other out and Pattinson is a real longshot has a better chance for Artificial
It is Giamatti's to lose.