Best Picture hopeful or not, Toronto International Film Festival has variety

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The 2026 Toronto International Film Festival is currently underway, and the selection this year is full of potential Best Picture nominees. From the politically charged Palme d’Or winner Fjord to Martin McDonagh’s latest crime-buddy dark comedy Wild Horse Nine, there are plenty of films that would not surprise anyone if they ended up getting nominated for the big prize at the Oscars. Instead of predicting a similar list to the many websites dedicated to that very task, I thought I’d look at three movies that probably don’t have the highest chance, but might still be worth a look.

Being Heumann | Sian Heder

Following her Best Picture win for CODA, director Sian Heder’s latest effort is a biopic of one of the most important and overlooked activists of the 20th century, Judith Heumann. Heumann was a vital leader in the disability rights movement who effectively fought for systemic change, vastly improving not only working conditions but also everyday life for people with disabilities. Heder’s Being Heumann focuses on the 504 Sit-in, a 28-day sit-in protest in 1977’s San Francisco led by Heumann along with over 100 people with varying disabilities. The film stars Ruth Maladey as Heumann and Mark Ruffalo as Joseph Califano, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare at the time, whom the protest was largely aimed at. Early reviews are fairly positive, with an 83% Rotten Tomatoes critic rating and 24 reviews at the time of writing. Academy voters love both biopics and Heder’s previous film, so it’s not impossible to get the nomination, especially given the subject matter. This is one of those biopics where even if it isn’t a great film, it was worth making if the result means that more people know about Judy Heumann.

Being Heumann plays in select theaters on Nov. 6 and streams on Apple TV+ on Nov. 13

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother | Bassam Tariq

It’s 2019, and Marvel Studios has just announced that Mahershala Ali will play the character Blade in a new film set in their universe. Two years later, a man named Bassam Tariq is officially hired as the director. The following year, Tariq officially departs the project due to creative differences. Years go by, and nothing moves forward. It’s 2025, and Ali and Tariq decide to work together on a new film, concluding that it would be a shame to have to waste their creative collaboration, as well as the physique Ali kept up for Blade all those years. It’s now 2026, and Ali and Tariq are going to show us what Marvel Studios completely fumbled. Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother follows a religious hitman played by Ali, trying to protect his children from the criminal world engulfing his life, immediately following the death of his wife. This doesn’t sound like the most earth-shattering premise or anything; in fact, one may immediately picture a John Wick ripoff, but based on the trailer, there is such a clear vision that feels very unique to this filmmaker. The cinematography feels gritty and rough, but it feels textured in a way most modern action-crime movies just don’t look anymore. Maybe the movie doesn’t end up being great, but early word of mouth is very positive. If only Marvel let them cook…

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother plays in select theaters on Sept. 25

Look Back | Hirokazu Kore-eda

Look Back is the second film adaptation of Tatsuke Fujimoto’s one-shot manga about two girls in Japan discovering their passion for drawing manga of their own. The first adaptation came in the form of an hour-long anime film directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama, released in 2024. The anime is beautifully captured with absolutely stunning animation that makes the world and the art of drawing feel like magic. It’s so short and sweet that when it blindsides you with an emotional gut punch, it knocks the wind out of you. So why adapt it again? And in live-action, no less? This version is directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, responsible for directing critically acclaimed Japanese films like Nobody Knows (2004), about a 12-year-old boy forced to raise his siblings after their mother leaves them, and Shoplifters (2018), a movie about a found family of thieves whose lives unravel after the young son is arrested. The latter was actually nominated for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards. The best adaptations take the original material and, rather than retell the story in the same way, use the new medium to their full advantage to elicit the same emotion the adapter felt when first experiencing the original art. I have no idea what Koreeda felt when reading the manga or watching the anime, but I am so eager to find out. One major difference I know going in is that this movie is an hour and 40 minutes. This is 40 minutes longer than the anime, and the worry most may have is that this extra runtime will just feel like padding added purely to extend the runtime. This is a very valid concern, and the film may fall into this trap, but when the filmmaker has a proven track record of taking his craft seriously, I can’t help but at least be curious to see the choices made to fit this medium. It helps that the story is grounded in reality and a better fit for live action than most manga. More than anything, I hope the extra runtime gives us a chance to stay with the beautiful moments longer.

Look Back US release TBD

Full TIFF Schedule and list of films here.