Frontmezzjunkies reports: ‘YAGA’ arrives on Crave as “Possible Love” and “A Talent for Murder” open in Toronto theatres on Friday, October 23, bringing three TIFF 2026 discoveries to a wider audience.
One of the pleasures of Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) for me is getting swept away by a film or series, leaving the theatre with a head full of images and ideas, and then having to wait for other audiences to discover it. Friday, October 23, brings three chances to revisit that festival feeling: two films open on Toronto screens, and a new series arrives ready to stream on Crave Canada. All three were part of my TIFF 2026 experience, and each sent me home with something different to hold onto. Kat Sandler’s ‘YAGA’ drew me into the dark forests of Vancouver Island, Lee Chang-dong’s “Possible Love” left me contemplating the uneasy relationship between class, desire, and the stories we tell about other people, and Anton Corbijn’s “A Talent for Murder” sent me spiralling into Patricia Highsmith’s deliciously dangerous imagination. The festival may have offered me these first cinematic points of entry, but now the doors are opening for Toronto audiences.
Adapted from Sandler’s acclaimed stage play, ‘YAGA’ opens with a disappearance that quickly flies us into a coastal community where ancient Slavic folklore, witchcraft, and modern secrets seem to share the same dark patch of dense forest. Wealthy fishery heir Henry Park has vanished, prompting his family to enlist private investigator Rapp, played by Noah Reid, while local detective Carson, portrayed by Clark Backo, has her own reasons to question the people around them. Carrie-Anne Moss adds another intriguing presence as an enigmatic professor, and after watching only two episodes, I was still trying to work out who knew what and why everyone seemed to be keeping something to themselves. “Must be the season of the witch,” the series tells us, and I was more than happy to follow that invitation into the shadows. In my TIFF review, I described the opening episodes as having “the disturbing quality of a very dark fairy tale,” with a landscape that seems to possess “a life (and death) all of its own.” The wicked humour and flashes of sensuality keep the mystery teasingly alive, while the woods seem to be concealing something the characters have barely begun to understand. With only two episodes available at TIFF, I found myself hungry to know more. ‘YAGA’ has found a way to “lure me into the woods and fire up my interest.” And I can’t wait to see where this journey will take me.
Lee Chang-dong’s “Possible Love” asks us to consider what happens when the desire to understand another person becomes tangled up with the desire to tell their story. Over 164 minutes, the film follows two couples separated by class, circumstance, and their understanding of what it means to know another person. Ho-seok and Mi-ok are a working-class couple still struggling with the trauma of a devastating labour dispute, while wealthy Ye-ji and Sang-woo have the privilege and resources to move through the world with a very different sense of security. When Ye-ji begins filming a documentary about the other couple, her desire to understand their experiences becomes entangled with the uncomfortable question of where empathy ends, and intrusion begins. As I wrote in my review, “When does the desire to tell someone’s story become another way of taking something from them?” Ye-ji believes in the importance of giving people a voice, yet her privilege repeatedly complicates the connection she hopes to establish. With a film camera always within arm’s reach, Cho Yeo-jeong gives Ye-ji “a complicated mixture of enthusiasm, privilege, and genuine curiosity, allowing her to remain human even as the film exposes the limits of her understanding and her oblivious, somewhat intrusive behavior.” The relationships unfold through silences, small gestures, and awkward encounters, as the couples slowly confront the distance between wanting to understand someone and actually doing so. Jeon Do-yeon and Sul Kyung-gu bring a deeply affecting emotional weight to Mi-ok and Ho-seok, whose connection has been strained by everything they have endured. I admitted in my TIFF review that my tired eyes struggled at times with the film’s considerable running time, but its questions continued to draw me back in. I still find myself thinking about “how difficult it can be to hold a moment long enough for another person’s life to come fully into focus.”
Anton Corbijn’s “A Talent for Murder” sets its game in the Swiss Alps, where celebrated crime novelist Patricia Highsmith, played by Helen Mirren, meets Edward Ridgeway, a young publishing representative portrayed by Alden Ehrenreich. Edward has arrived hoping to persuade Highsmith to write another instalment in her Tom Ripley series, but the prickly author has little interest in a routine publishing conversation. She wants to be amused, intrigued, and surprised, and soon sets Edward a challenge that draws them into a game with increasingly dangerous implications. Mirren makes Highsmith a deliciously difficult presence, armed with sharp looks, wicked smiles, antique weapons, and a mind that seems to be several moves ahead. “We all have a dark side,” she declares, delivering the observation with a mischievous certainty that makes it sound like both a philosophical position and a private joke. As the fictional murder plot begins to absorb the events unfolding around Edward, the distinction between inventing a character and revealing one becomes increasingly slippery. Corbijn gives the film a crisp, watchful atmosphere, with Robbie Ryan’s cinematography making the Alpine landscape and carefully composed interiors feel full of concealed motives. In my review, I described the film’s two narrative strands as beginning to “reflect and distort one another,” drawing us further into its sinister spell. The elaborate plotting occasionally loses momentum, and I wished the final turn had delivered a more satisfying jolt, but Mirren and Ehrenreich keep the shifting power dynamic alive. The film is especially engaging when it explores the unsettling intimacy between a writer and the person she may be bringing into existence.
TIFF gave me three very different worlds to wander through, and Friday gives Toronto audiences the chance to find their own way into them. I am more than ready to return to the woods with ‘YAGA’, to sit with the uncomfortable questions of “Possible Love” (this time with more awake eyes), and to revisit the dangerous turns of Highsmith’s imagination in “A Talent for Murder.” Each left me with something to ponder and puzzle over, and now I get to see what Toronto audiences make of them. TIFF opened the door for me. Now I’m looking forward to hearing what other audiences find on the other side.
