TIFF 51: Who were the best lead actresses at the fest?

Cláudio Alves and Eurocheese pause the current onslaught of TIFF reviews to discuss a topic near and dear to their hearts – actressing! 

Julianne Moore might just fake-smoke her way to a second Oscar with THE DEBUT.

CLÁUDIO: For years, I dreamed of attending TIFF, always following coverage of the festival by my favorite critics and pundits. The Film Experience was my favorite haunt in that regard, and I can still recall how much I yearned to be part of the conversation when Nathaniel, Nick Davis, Joe Reid and Katey Rich would congregate for a very special podcast episode. And yet, coming to my fourth year of actually attending and covering the festival, that youthful excitement started to fade into a half-forgotten memory. Well, the feeling blossomed again when I finally got to meet you in person, dear Eurocheese, and read your perspective on the event, still full of the old excitement I suddenly felt coming back to life within my jaded, withered heart. For that, you have my eternal gratitude.

But we're not here to be sentimental - though that's often my role around these parts - so we might as well get to it. Let's talk Best Actress at TIFF...

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Venice: Elisa's Jury of One

Elisa Giudici reporting from Venice...

[EDITOR'S NOTE: this was written shortly before the awards were handed so these are Elisa's feelings rather than comments on the winners.]

May el-Toukhy's WOMAN UNKNOWN won the Golden Lion but will it receive the same honor from Elisa's Jury of One?

Overall Festival Impressions

What a year to remember 2026 was for the oldest film festival in the world: arguably the best edition I have witnessed since I first attended with a press pass ten years ago, and the first in a very long time in which (helped by a particularly weak Cannes selection) Alberto Barbera was finally able to surpass Venice's natural competitor. In terms of overall cinematic quality, Venice eventually surpassed Cannes after years of trying to do so...

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Venice: Lee Chang-dong's Oscar submission "Possible Love"

Elisa Giudici reporting from Venice

POSSIBLE LOVE

It took Lee Chang-dong more than ten years to write Possible Love, after the horrifying police repression of laid-off SsangYong Motor workers in 2009 made him want to tackle the way inequality in Korean society is built around work, and around the pride or shame attached to having or losing a good job. After seeing the result, it is difficult not to marvel that it took him only ten years to write one of the most flawless and powerful films of the last decade. Every scene across its 164-minute running time works like an instrument in a concert, sometimes with almost diabolical precision, and as an homage to Kieślowski’s Dekalog (to which it is dedicated) and similarly intent on encompassing both the moral dilemmas of ordinary life and the capitalist structures surrounding them...

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