Toronto opens September 10 with "Being Heumann" and launches its market

The Toronto International Film Festival turns 51 and changes structure. From September 10 to 20, 2026, the Canadian festival will pair the public event with a formal market, TIFF: The Market, hosted at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and separate from the TIFF Lightbox and Scotiabank Theatre venues. The market also includes a program dedicated to genre cinema, as indicated on the festival’s official website. It marks the shift from a festival with a strong focus on awards to a declared commercial platform.

The opening has been entrusted to the world premiere of “Being Heumann” by Siân Heder, an Apple Original film dedicated to accessibility activist Judy Heumann, starring Ruth Madeley, scheduled for Thursday, September 10 at Roy Thomson Hall. The announcement of the Gala Presentations was made by the festival: chief executive officer Cameron Bailey presented the title, recalling the director’s previous Oscar-winning work.

The world premiere lineup

The announced world premieres make up a varied slate, compiled by Gold Derby: “The Last Photograph” by Zack Snyder, scheduled for September 13 with Stuart Martin; “A Talent for Murder” by Anton Corbijn; “Evil Genius,” directed by Courteney Cox with David Harbour; “Onwards and Sideways” by John Madden; “Diary of a Mad Old Man” by Wayne Wang.

Alongside the world premieres are films arriving from other festivals: “Prima Facie” by Susanna White with Cynthia Erivo, “The Assassin(s)” by South Korean director Hur Jin-ho, and “Ink” by Danny Boyle, which opened Venice and has been acquired by Netflix.

Toronto’s significance in the awards race carries a written rule: non-English-language winners of the Platform Prize automatically become eligible for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. The festival is also hosting the 2026 edition of the Student Academy Awards. Participation conditions and dates are also listed in the official entry on FilmFreeway. Single tickets went on sale for members starting August 21 and for the general public starting August 31.

Seoul, the week that decides the year

In South Korea the calendar works differently: not around a festival, but around a holiday. Chuseok 2026, the Korean harvest festival, falls from September 24 to 26 and opens a long weekend traditionally decisive for the national box office. The industry concentrates its heaviest releases on that window: nine Korean films are listed for release in theaters in September, according to the distributors’ calendar compiled by DANMEE and updated as of August 13. The cast includes Ryu Seung-ryong, Han So-hee, Koo Kyo-hwan, Lee Min-ho, and Byun Yo-han.

The useful precedent for gauging competitive pressure is the previous year: in September 2025 the Korean box office chart tracked by KOBIS was led by the Japanese animated film “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - Infinity Castle,” ahead of “My Punch-Drunk Boxer” by Park Chan-wook with Lee Byung-hun and Son Ye-jin, released on September 24. The data appears in KOARI’s account of Korean Film Council figures: that month the top spot went to a foreign title, not a domestic production.

What we don’t know

We do not know the total number of films selected at Toronto or the composition of the competitive sections. We do not know how many companies will take part in TIFF: The Market, which is in its first edition. On the Korean side, we do not have the titles of the nine films being released or their individual release dates, nor do we have box office projections.

The first verifiable date is the opening one: September 10 at Roy Thomson Hall, with “Being Heumann.”