The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is premiering some exciting new movies this year in what will be a massive return after two years of Covid-19. For 10 days, from Sep. 8th to Sep. 18th, Toronto will be the home to some of the most anticipated films of the year in a wide range of genres. There’s a rich variety of biographical and historical films making a world premier at the festival, and these are the movies that are focusing on real lives and real stories across the globe.

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Biography and History Movies at TIFF

  • Corsage Dalíland Ever Deadly Mariuopolis 2 North of Normal Pray For Our Sinners The Woman King Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Corsage

     Alamode FilmAd Vitam Distribution

Marie Kreutzer follows up a string of perceptive films about women’s relationships to each other and social institutions (Gruber is Leaving, We Used to Be Cool, The Ground Beneath My Feet) with the new film Corsage. The already acclaimed Cannes breakout from the Austrian filmmaker stars Vicky Krieps (of Old and Phantom Thread) as the 19th century Austrian Empress Elisabeth. With visually stunning cinematography from Judith Kaufmann and an incongruous but beautiful score from Camille, the sumptuous and slightly fictionalized picture details the extravagant lifestyle of an older elite class, albeit with a wicked sense of humor.

Dalíland

     Pressman / Popcorn FilmsZephyr Films

In what is surely one of the most bizarre cinematic combinations of the year, American Psycho director Mary Harron casts Ben Kingsley and Ezra Miller as an older and younger Salvador Dalí in Dalíland. The film will focus more exclusively on the famed surrealist painter’s relationship with his wife Gala, played by the legendary Barbara Sukowa. Rupert Graves and Suki Waterhouse co-star in what will certainly be an interesting biographical film.

Ever Deadly

     National Film Board of Canada

Ever Deadly is a biographical documentary film about the recent Polaris Prize-winning musician Tanya Tagaq. Produced by the National Film Board of Canada, the movie is co-created by Tagaq with the ever-playful filmmaker Chelsea McMullan (My Prairie Home), who implements concert footage, interviews and experimental footage in Nunavut, and delightful animation from the Inuk artist Shuvinai Ashoona. The film will be a vibrant combination of these styles as a meditation not just on Tagaq’s family history, but on Indigenous culture, music, and Canada itself.

Mariupolis 2

     Easy Rider FilmsExtimacy Films

The screening of Mariupolis 2, the final documentary from Lithuanian filmmaker and anthropologist Mantas Kvedaravičius, promises to be one of the most touching and melancholic moments at TIFF. Kvedaravičius was a fearless researcher and documentarian, often immersing himself in war zones; he returned to the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol (after filming there in 2016) to make a follow-up film during the Siege, when Russian troops invaded.

While filming Mariupolis 2, he was tragically shot and killed, and his loving wife Hanna Bilobrova brought his film back home to finish. A melancholic tone poem about war and death, Mariupolis 2 will be a sad swan song to a brilliant career cut short, and a brutally raw glimpse at the horrors of the Russian war against Ukraine.

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North of Normal

     Elevation Pictures

Canadian filmmaker Carly Stone is following up her sweet film The New Romantic with this adaptation of Cea Sunrise Person’s memoir North of Normal. Person grew up in the wilderness of Canada with a perpetually stoned young mother during the 1970s, and the film follows her path out of the woods and off to Paris, where Person became a famous runway model. The great Sarah Gadon stars in North of Normal alongside Amanda Fix, Robert Carlyle, and James D’Arcy, and is scored by the warm synth-pop band Electric Youth.

Pray for Our Sinners

The Irish journalist and documentarian Sinéad O’Shea follows up her powerful but painful film A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot with the new documentary Pray for Our Sinners. Compiling interviews with a wide range of people across Ireland, the film constructs a damning narrative about the mistreatment of women and children in the country, focusing on certain ’normal’ citizens who are confronting the violence and trauma of state-sanctioned homes for babies and women where so much brutality occurs.

The Woman King

     Sony Pictures Releasing

Filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood has been building her wonderful career up to this very moment at TIFF — from the intimate explorations of sexuality and the Black experience in Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights, to managing ensemble casts of women in The Secret Life of Bees, and finally mastering action with Cloak & Dagger and The Old Guard.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

     The Roku Channel

The title says it all. After four decades in the music and movie industry, the great Weird Al Yankovic is getting a proper musician’s biopic, though it promises to be almost as parodic as his music, especially since it incongruously stars Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is actually a feature film variation on a Funny or Die short from 2010, which hilariously starred Aaron Paul as Yankovic at the height of Paul’s Breaking Bad fame (Paul was supposed to reprise the role, but came down with Covid-19 right before production).

Whether the film holds up with a full feature length runtime remains to be seen, but considering how beloved both Radcliffe and Yankovic are, it’s certain to be delightful. It also marks the most popular and anticipated release from The Roku Channel, who are putting their hat into the ring of streaming services with this big, fun, festival-ready film. Weird: The Al Yankovic might be a bright good time in the midst of many darker, more serious films at TIFF.