After Elena by Shawn Garry
The 51st edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), running September 10–20, 2026, returns with a diverse and compelling selection of Latin American cinema, highlighting acclaimed auteurs, visionary premieres, and bold emerging voices across several key sections of the festival program.
The Brazilian film On Behalf of My Son / Vicentina Pede Desculpas by Gabriel Martins will have its world premiere in the Platform section of TIFF, the festival’s only competitive section, where it is the only Latin American film selected this year. The moving drama, starring Rejane Faria, follows a grieving mother seeking forgiveness from the families affected by a tragic bus accident.
Gael García Bernal, Benjamín Naishtat, and Beth de Araújo will screen their latest films in TIFF’s Special Presentations section. The latest directorial feature from superstar multihyphenate García Bernal is a psychologically astute comedy of manners for the modern age. Exploring class, ambition, and the delicate art of social advancement, Hombre al agua follows an ensemble of eclectic characters from across the Americas, each seeking to become something more than who they are.
Glaxo, Benjamín Naishtat’s riveting adaptation of Hernán Ronsino’s novel, transforms a single betrayal into an absorbing tale of guilt, loyalty, and memory, weaving personal tragedy with Argentina’s turbulent twentieth-century history through an atmosphere of mounting mystery and suspense.
In Josephine, from Brazilian-American director Beth de Araújo, an eight-year-old girl witnesses a crime in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. As the adults around her remain helpless to console her, she acts out in a desperate attempt to reclaim a sense of safety. De Araújo crafts a tense, deeply empathetic portrait of a child wrestling with an overwhelming fear and anger she can neither escape nor fully comprehend.
Nosotros by Joaquín Ruano
Two Latin American debut features will premiere in TIFF’s Discovery section: Nosotros by Guatemalan director Joaquín Ruano and I Am Mario / Soy Mario by Mexican director Sharon Kleinberg. Nosotros follows Romero, who longs for something beyond the horizon. Leaving behind his wife and son in the Guatemalan highlands, he moves to the capital to work as a private security guard. Thrust into a hyper-masculine world of constant vigilance and low-wage patrols, his rigid routine begins to shift when he meets Nubia, a trans woman who owns a small shop in the mall where he works.
Kleinberg’s directorial debut, I Am Mario, centers on a forty-year-old trans taxi driver who faces an unexpected pregnancy that opens the possibility of fulfilling his dream of becoming a father. Developed over three years of research and close collaboration with members of Mexico’s trans community, Kleinberg’s screenplay confronts social taboos and traditional notions of machismo surrounding transmasculine pregnancy.
Several Latin American films will screen in the Centerpiece section of the festival, dedicated to spotlighting the best in global cinema, four of them having their world premieres. In Love Is the Monster / Amor es el monstruo, a chilling dystopian thriller shaped by fear and inequality, Costa Rican filmmaker Neto Villalobos Brenes follows a grandmother, powerfully portrayed by Chilean actress Paulina García, whose granddaughter’s kidnapping forces her into impossible moral choices.
In the Chilean After Elena / Después de Elena by Shawn Garry, the death of a family’s matriarch forces four relatives to confront decades of silence, resentment, and buried affection. Led by Alfredo Castro, this sharp ensemble piece balances humor and melancholy in a moving portrait of grief and reconciliation.
Where the River Begins / Donde comienza el río, the bracing and poetic third feature by Colombian-born director Juan Andrés Arango, follows an Emberá woman who, displaced by violence, undertakes a dangerous journey to find a better life for herself and her daughter.
I Am Mario by Sharon Kleinberg
Also from Colombia, The Bovine with the Curved Horns / El bovino de los cuernos curvos, the debut feature by Omar E. Ospina Giraldo, blends Caribbean fantasy, magical realism, and Colombia’s painful history to tell the story of a boy searching for his missing father through a landscape where myth and violence coexist. It is a haunting, poetic debut of remarkable beauty and emotional power.
Having its world premiere in the Centerpiece section is Neverman, the poignant second feature from Cuban-Canadian director Rodrigo Barriuso, in which Broadway and cabaret icon Justin Vivian Bond stars as a transgender gay rights activist with worsening Alzheimer’s disease who faces mistreatment in her nursing home.
Also screening in the Centerpiece program are the Mexican films Flies / Moscas by Fernando Eimbcke and Ashes / Ceniza en la boca by Diego Luna. Set in Mexico City and starring Teresita Sánchez, Bastian Escobar, Hugo Ramírez, and Enrique Arreola, Flies follows Olga, who rents out a room to a man whose wife is hospitalized nearby. When she discovers that he has been secretly bringing his nine-year-old son into the room, Olga’s carefully controlled life begins to unravel as their worlds quietly intertwine.
In Ashes, Diego Luna crafts a powerful and deeply humane portrait of the immigrant experience in his fourth feature film, seen through the eyes of a young woman forced to rebuild her life in a new country. The film offers a nuanced exploration of family, identity, belonging, and displacement.
Additionally, two Brazilian co-productions will screen in the Centerpiece section: the Nepali film Elephants in the Fog by Abinash Bikram Shah and the Lebanese drama Furies by Rami Kodeih. Also in the section is Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! by Josef Kubota Wladyka, starring Cuban actor Alberto Guerra, Mexican-American actor Alejandro Edda, and Mexican actor Damián Alcázar, about a Japanese woman who returns to ballroom dancing after losing her partner and finds herself drawn to her new teacher.
Wavelengths, the festival’s avant-garde section dedicated to boundary-pushing feature films, mid-length works, and short programs, will showcase three of Latin America’s most singular contemporary filmmakers: Nicolás Pereda, Lisandro Alonso, and Mariano Llinás.
Set almost entirely within a single apartment, Pereda’s latest feature, the delightfully absurd comedy Everything Else Is Noise / Lo demás es ruido, follows a composer whose seemingly ordinary television interview gradually unravels into a deadpan portrait of artistic rivalries, family dynamics, and the creative process itself. Blending his trademark understated humor with sharp observations about gender, collaboration, and artistic identity, Pereda once again demonstrates why he remains one of the most adventurous voices working in international cinema today.
Lisandro Alonso’s long-awaited return to the world of his landmark debut feature La libertad, Double Freedom / La libertad doble, revisits the quietly mesmerizing universe of Misael Saavedra. Alonso transforms what initially appears to be a companion piece into a profound meditation on responsibility, family, and the fragile boundaries between freedom and obligation.
Drawing from an exhaustive review of personal papers, books, and intimate spaces, The Life of Jorge Luis Borges / Biografía de Jorge Luis Borges presents a cinematic inquiry into the author’s singular existence. Mariano Llinás frames Borges as a quiet, underground warrior whose sole cause was literature. Operating from the sanctuary of a library—much like a secret agent defending a hidden world—he devoted his life to expanding the territory of books, plots, and words for his fellow pilgrims.
Two Latin American documentaries will make their world premieres in the TIFF Docs section: The Hummingbird Paints Fragrant Songs, directed by Èlia Gasull Balada and Matteo Norzi, and Like Magic / Por arte de magia, the debut feature by Melissa Saavedra Gil.
The Hummingbird Paints Fragrant Songs centers on celebrated artist Sara Flores, a visionary practitioner of kené—the sacred geometric design system of the Indigenous Shipibo people of the Peruvian Amazon. As international acclaim transforms her family’s reality, Flores confronts mortality, spiritual awakening, and environmental crisis, channeling her art into a stand for Indigenous sovereignty.
Blending archival footage, personal testimony, and a decades-long search for answers, Colombian director Saavedra Gil transforms a childhood tragedy into a powerful exploration of memory, truth, and healing in Like Magic, illuminating both a personal story and a generation shaped by violence.
Three Latin American short films will screen in the Short Cuts program: El aumento by María Belén Poncio (Argentina), Madrugada by Sebastián Lojo (Guatemala), and After Image by Rita Ferrando (Canada/Argentina).
Rounding out the festival’s significant Latin American presence is the Brazilian series Oxygen Masks Will (Not) Drop Automatically / Máscaras de Oxigênio Não Cairão Automaticamente, by Marcelo Gomes and Carol Minêm.
The 51st edition of the Toronto International Film Festival runs September 10–20, 2026.
