Here are 5 films from the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival you’ll want to see

In the glistening CN Tower, cinema lovers flocked to King Street once again for the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Highly-anticipated titles such as Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” and Ron Howard’s “Eden” brought the stars to the red carpet and were the talks of the festival.

I didn’t see any of those.

Luckily, there are five titles outside of the lights that should have people talking this year, most likely as they make their way out of the Independent Picture House in Charlotte. Here are my five best of the Toronto International Film Festival.

‘Anora’

Already with hardware in its cabinet, the most recent Palme d’or winner at the Cannes Film Festival will probably finish near the top of my list for the year as well. 

Directed by Sean Baker, known for “Tangerine” and “The Florida Project,” and starring Mikey Madison, “Anora” follows a sex worker in New York City (Madison) who connects in her club with the son of a Russian oligarch named Vanya (Mark Eidelshtein). What begins as a series of transactions between two consenting adults blossoms into a romance that ends with them tying the knot on an impromptu trip to Las Vegas.

Naturally, Vanya’s family learns about the marriage and rushes to New York in an effort to annul it. What follows next feels like a mix between Baker’s work with “Tangerine” and some of the more recent offerings by the Safdie Brothers such as “Good Time” or “Uncut Gems” as Vanya runs off with Anora, along with three Russian henchmen for the family, scouring New York City trying to find him.

Anora is just a commodity for everyone in the situation. 

To Vanya, her body makes him feel good and she gives him the attention he seeks in rebellion of his parents. For the henchmen, she is a pawn in trying to lure Vanya back and only worth the money she will be paid to annul what they see as a green card marriage. And in the club, she is just another item to be ogled by the men that frequent the establishment.

Anora has to break the cycle as much as get out of the situation she has found herself in, and Baker is as adept as any contemporary filmmaker to exude the humanism from these characters. Everyone is just a pawn for the rich and you have to find agency to escape.

“Anora” has a planned October release from NEON.

‘Bird’

Speaking of contemporary humanist directors, Andrea Arnold should be in the conversation. And after a few detours, she has returned to her roots with “Bird.”

The film follows Bailey (newcomer Nykiya Adams) as she navigates life in poverty around North Kent. Her father (Barry Keoghan) is absent and abusive, way too young to have parental responsibilities. 

For most of the movie, he is zipping through town on his electric scooter and trying to get rich quick with the help of a psychedelic toad he purchased. He’s recently gotten engaged and has even less time for Bailey, who seems interested in the “vigilant” work of her brother Hunter and his “gang.” 

That is until she runs into a drifter named Bird (Franz Rogowski) who is looking for any information about his family who lived in the town’s projects decades ago.

Filled with the honest depictions of poverty that audiences can come to expect from Arnold, “Bird” also has a twinge of magical realism that feels deftly added and not at all distracting from the overall narrative. There’s more to Bird than Bailey can immediately tell.

While it starts uneasily due to the other people she comes in contact with around North Kent, he displays that he is different from the other people in her orbit: curious, fluid and engaged.

The film harkens back to “Fish Tank” – probably my favorite of Arnold’s work to date – as it captures people in difficult situations trying to survive above their means. Bailey feels trapped in the cycle around her, but this new perspective could be one that helps her break from it.

“Bird” is scheduled to be released in November through Mubi.

‘Cloud’

It’s easy to do evil on the internet. You don’t have to look your victims in the face.

But evil still catches up to Yoshii (Masaki Suda) in the latest thriller from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Yoshii works as a reseller — grabbing items in demand and reselling them at a marked-up price.

His friend calls it easy money and Yoshii loves money. So does his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) who talks to him about all of the things she would love to buy with lots of money. He also works at a factory as a connection to reality, but quits as soon as his boss tries to give him a promotion. Too many responsibilities.

In the background, Yoshii infuriates a good number of people by the way he makes his money online. 

He never sees them, but he runs into a dead rat on his doorstep and wire blocking his scooter path that gives him pause that he might be being monitored. Once he hits it big on an item, he moves to the country with Akiko with the idea of fully focusing on his reseller business.

Kurosawa starts the movie by weaving a procedural: Yoshii identifies an item to sell, marks it up and then waits for the profits to roll in — the audience a voyeur to him waiting for the sales screen to light up with “sold.” But it bends genres by the third act, turning into much more of a thriller as those he has wronged begin to catch up with him more tangibly.

It’s punchy, gripping and a perfect edge-of-your-seat movie to offset some of the awards fare this fall.

“Cloud” will be released in late September by Mubi.

‘The Brutalist’

Vaulted to the top of people’s minds after it generated buzz from the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, “The Brutalist” is probably one that you’ll stare at the most and be like: should I go see this in a theater?

To answer your question, the hesitation is due to the nearly four-hour runtime. At least to me, the quality of the movie made it well worth the time investment.

“The Brutalist” is a five-course meal of a picture, for sure. Don’t go in lightly. But that is because it is grappling with themes like the American Dream, post-war America, post-war immigration, the Jewish experience in America and the weight of capitalism over everything.

It follows Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian Jew who immigrates to America in 1947. Toth arrives at Ellis Island and makes his way to Philadelphia where he lives with and works with his brother-in-law Attila, who owns a furniture store outside the city with his American wife.

A son of an extremely wealthy businessman (Joe Alwyn) enters the store one day asking if the two men can help him redesign his father’s library while the patriarch is away. Back in Budapest, Toth was an accomplished architect, designing synagogues, community buildings and libraries to much acclaim. 

He brings that same skill to the library but it is not met with any praise as the wealthy businessman, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), returns home early and shouts the men out of his home.

Toth is kicked out by his brother-in-law as well, and joins a friend in construction afterwards. At least until Van Buren finds him, apologizes for his reaction and shares his love for the library as well as a proposal: design a community center in memory of his mother.

From there, it becomes a lesson in power, where others stand in the face of the wealthy and what the United States values over all else — profit. The lead performance by Brody is massive, possibly career-best work, and director Brady Corbet crafts a film that many have already called an instant classic. I don’t know if I’m there, but it is certainly one of the must watch films of the year.

“The Brutalist” does not have a release date yet, but is being distributed by A24.

‘Caught by the Tides’

Nobody has captured modern China quite like director Jia Zhangke. In his latest film, “Caught by the Tides,” it feels like a reflection on the past 20 years in the eyes of one of its biggest champions and critics.

Pieced together through documentary footage along with outtakes from two of his earlier films, the movie loosely follows Qiaoqiao (frequent Jia collaborator Zhao Tao) who is navigating through Datong City in northern China. It’s 2001 and there isn’t a lot to do outside of visit clubs to party and drink, and mingle with friends. 

She has a relationship with Guo Bin (Zhubin Li) but he seems detached to her advances.

It picks up again in 2006 as Qiaoqiao visits towns along the Yangtze River near the Three Gorges Dam in southern China looking for Bin. He’s developed some connections within the region with other “brothers” but gets tied up in illegal activities. 

She eventually finds him but it’s over. The final act takes place in 2022 as Qiaoqiao has returned to Datong City and has a life, but it is disrupted when Bin returns seeking his former love.

The narrative is less important than the edges of the film.

Datong in 2022 is unrecognizable to 2001 as autonomous robots roam the stores and the clubs have scattered. Modernity has arrived and flipped over life for these two characters, but also the population of China. 

Jia is critical of this, making references to the 2008 Beijing Olympics as an instigator to rapid growth across the country. The new devices are cool, but they lack the faces we saw at the beginning of the film and there seems to be a loss of culture. Jia is no stranger to ruminating on what is lost as we grow up.

“Caught by the Tides” does not have a U.S. release but more of Jia’s work can be found online at the Criterion Collection and Kanopy.

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This story was originally published September 16, 2024 at 6:10 AM with the headline "Here are 5 films from the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival you’ll want to see."

Zach Dennis

The Charlotte Observer