The TIFF51 Experience: Day Two | Fingers Crossed
By Ross
I really can’t believe I made it to my first planned press screening. After yesterday’s sudden detour from TIFF to home, with my stomach making it very clear who was actually in charge of the schedule, I woke up feeling a little weak but determined to get back into a cinema. My first TIFF51 day had started exactly as planned, with me finally choosing the beautiful and disturbing “Coward” over the Mike Leigh film I had been hoping to see, but the day took a very different turn after lunch with my NYC friend who is visiting. I found myself feeling nauseous and completely exhausted, and all I could think about was getting home and lying down. That meant missing the opening night of the Coal Mine production of Pre-Existing Condition, which was exactly the right decision. Today, though, I’m back, fingers crossed, a little fragile, but very ready to see what the festival has waiting for me.
A Long Winter
Andrew Haigh – CANADIAN PREMIERE – Canada, United Kingdom | 2026 | 117m | English
After his mother disappears during the first blizzard of the season, a young man refuses to give up hope as one long Colorado winter reshapes his relationship with his father and his understanding of the man he is becoming, from Andrew Haigh, the acclaimed director of “All of Us Strangers“.
Following the extraordinary emotional resonance of 2023’s “All of Us Strangers“, Andrew Haigh returns with a period drama occupying the liminal space between hope and acceptance. Adapted by Haigh and Colm Tóibín from the acclaimed Irish novelist’s short story, “A Long Winter” follows Mike (Fred Hechinger), a young man on the cusp of adulthood whose life is upended when his mother disappears during the first blizzard of the season. As the search stretches from days into weeks, the onset of winter becomes inseparable from the family’s slow reckoning with the possibility that she may never return.
While Mike’s emerging sexuality forms part of his journey, Haigh’s gaze remains fixed on something broader: the emotional fault lines that open within a family when normalcy is ruptured. Set in the mountains of Colorado and filmed in the breathtaking Canadian Rockies, the vast landscape is both beautiful and unforgiving, mirroring the emotional distance between Mike and his stoic father. Haigh’s patient, intimate filmmaking finds an ideal companion in Tóibín’s measured storytelling, where every silence, glance, and gesture carries extraordinary weight.
Hechinger (The White Lotus) embodies Mike’s evolution with remarkable sensitivity. Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear) is superb as an aging father struggling to express his own grief, while Caitríona Balfe (Belfast, TIFF ’21) leaves a profound impression as the absent mother whose disappearance shapes every moment that follows. With memorable support from Kit Connor (Heartstopper) and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Reservation Dogs), “A Long Winter” is a beautifully observed work from one of contemporary cinema’s most compassionate filmmakers. – JASON RYLE
The Assassin(s)
암살자(들) – Hur Jin-ho – WORLD PREMIERE –South Korea | 2026 | 131m | Korean, Japanese
Based on the attempted assassination of South Korean President Park Chung-hee, the latest from Hur Jin-ho (TIFF ’23’s A Normal Family) is a large-canvas procedural about police and journalists determined to uncover a seemingly impenetrable conspiracy.
Based on the attempted assassination of South Korean President Park Chung-hee, the latest from Hur Jin-ho (TIFF ’23’s A Normal Family) is a large-canvas procedural in which a handful of police officers and journalists risk everything to root out a seemingly impenetrable conspiracy. With an all-star cast including Lee Min-ho (Gangnam 1970), Park Hae-il (TIFF ’22’s Decision to Leave), and Yoo Hai-jin (A Taxi Driver), “The Assassin(s)” is a suspenseful tale of perseverance in the face of overwhelming corruption.
August 15, 1974. Gunshots are fired during the president’s speech at the 29th Liberation Day ceremony. President Park survives, but First Lady Yuk Young-soo and a young girl are killed. Security officers seize the assassin, Mun Se-gwang, a Korean Japanese man deemed a Maoist radical. But did he act alone? There were six shots fired, but Mun’s pistol only carried five bullets.
Inconsistencies in the official report accumulate, but every time the press or police make inquiries, they’re accused of being communists or ordered to leave the incident alone. A senior inspector (Yoo), a veteran journalist (Park), and a rookie reporter (Lee) resolve to do whatever it takes to uncover the truth, despite threats against their careers and lives.
Returning to TIFF for his third Gala Presentation, Hur is a skilled conductor of set pieces, multi-threaded storytelling, and character development. His heroes are confronted with danger at every turn, but forge ahead with the conviction that a free press is essential to a functioning democracy, and the truth, however ugly, will always set you free.
By the time I was back in a cinema, I was still carrying a little of yesterday with me. There is something wonderfully grounding about the simple act of finding your seat, watching the lights go down, and allowing a film to pull your attention somewhere else for a couple of hours. “A Long Winter” brought me into beautiful snowy grief and uncertainty, while “The Assassin(s)” flew me into a very different kind of tension, one built around a largely unknown (at least to me) moment of history, corruption, journalism, and the dangerous pursuit of truth. That is the part of TIFF I keep coming back for, the feeling that I can arrive carrying whatever is happening in my own little corner of the world and then suddenly find myself completely absorbed in something else, far away and unique. Yesterday my body told me to go home to bed. Today, thankfully, the movies gave me a reason to return.
