2026 TIFF Recap!!

We’re back home from our latest trip to the Toronto International Film Festival! And as always, we’re offering you a buffet of our reactions from a week’s worth of movies that will be coming soon to a theatre near you! We talk about the newest People’s Choice Award winner La Bola Negra, along with the International People’s Choice Award winner (and Best Actor contender for Andrew Scott) Elsinore. Topics also include Julianne Moore earning huge crowd reaction in The Debut, Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine underwhelming us both, our collective favorite of the fest Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care, the TIFF preroll ads, injuries, festival flops, and more!!

242 – Pride

This week’s episode is one we have promised for some time: 2014′s Pride. The film tells the true story of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, a queer activist group that partnered with a Welsh town in the 1980s during the mining strike under Thatcher’s rule. Following the lives of both the straight townsfolk and the queer Londoners, the film paints a portrait of queerness, allyship, and activism that rings true today while also satisfying on a crowd-pleasing level. After launching at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and winning the Queer Palm, the film launched in the fall of 2014 to some ardent critical fans, but didn’t cross the Oscar finish line.

This episode, we talk about the theatre career of director Matthew Warchus and the film’s comforts in this current tumultuous moment for queer people. We also talk about the film’s tremendous ensemble headlined by Imelda Staunton and Bill Nighy, gay infighting, and unofficial THOB mascot Men Trussler.

Topics also include the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, Monica Bellucci bluntly listing director names, and the concept of Festival Regret.

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