TIFF Lightbox 2026 January/February programming highlights

This January and February, TIFF is spotlighting Galician filmmaker Oliver Laxe; visionary Spanish-Mexican filmmaker Luis Buñuel, including the new 4K restoration of Viridiana; and Mikio Naruse through a retrospective continuing through January.

With awards season in full swing, TIFF audiences can catch early screenings of Festival standouts and Oscar hopefuls, including TIFF International People’s Choice Award winner No Other Choice, The Voice of Hind Rajab, Father Mother Sister Brother, Sound of Falling, and more.

Looking ahead, TIFF will reveal Canada’s Top Ten list, the annual showcase celebrating features and shorts across the country, which runs February 5–8. Full programming details will be announced in early January.

Beyond February, TIFF Cinematheque will host a retrospective on celebrated French filmmaker and Magnum photographer Raymond Depardon, co-presented with Film at Lincoln Center (FLC). Plus, in anticipation of upcoming summer blockbuster The Odyssey, TIFF will mount a complete retrospective of Oscar-winning filmmaker Christopher Nolan as its summer marquee series, giving audiences the opportunity to revisit his groundbreaking body of work.

TIFF invites audiences to celebrate Black History Month and Lunar New Year through special screenings and cultural spotlights. Tickets for January programming will be available to TIFF Members on Wednesday, December 17, and to the public on Friday, December 19. Tickets for February programming will be available to TIFF Members on Wednesday, January 14, and to the public on Friday, January 16. See tiff.net for up-to-date listings.TIFF Cinematheque
What Remains: Reclaiming Memories, Materialities, and Embodied Histories in African Cinema with series curator Julie MacArthur
January 9–16
When experiences of colonization and violence erase, bury, or displace the archives, memories, material objects, and even the very bodies of ancestors — what remains? Curated by Julie MacArthur, the three-part series highlights an emerging trend among African filmmakers who use film to reconstitute what remains of the past. Whether through fiction or documentary, films by leading contemporary African filmmakers recover missing and fragmented remnants to reconcile difficult histories in visually innovative and deeply personal ways. Films include Nome, Under the Hanging Tree with director Perivi Katjavivi, Murmures with director Kivu Ruhorahoza and producer Ruteisire Sharon Mbabazi, and Our Land, Our Freedom with filmmakers Meena Nanji and Zippy Kimundu. Co-presented by TIFF Cinematheque and the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto.

Oliver Laxe: Modern Mystic
January 14–18
Over the past 15 years, Oliver Laxe has made a quartet of features that has significantly marked the landscape of contemporary European cinema. Each film blends mysticism, stark natural beauty, and human fragility into a body of work that feels timeless and startlingly modern. Laxe’s latest film, Sirāt (TIFF ‘25), recently received the Best International Film award from the Toronto Film Critics Association (TFCA), and is his most accessible and powerful yet: a gripping, atmospheric, existential action thriller wherein nature, faith, and fate collide. Curated by TIFF Cinematheque Senior Curator Andréa Picard, Oliver Laxe: Modern Mystic features some of the filmmaker’s rarely screened short films alongside his four features, including Laxe’s debut You Are All Captains presented on 35mm and his carte blanche selection, Kaneto Shindo’s mesmerizing The Naked Island from 1960, which will also be screened on 35mm.

Luis Buñuel: Desire and Deviance
January 30 – February 25
Across five decades, visionary filmmaker Luis Buñuel contributed a daring and profoundly influential body of work to the world cinema canon. Skewering bourgeois pretenses, religion, and authoritarian repression, his surreal satires, literary adaptations, and forays into popular genres subverted formal and stylistic expectations. On the occasion of an assortment of new restorations — including the Toronto Premiere of Viridiana which launches the retrospective in a new 4K restoration courtesy of Janus Films — this series highlights a selection of his indelible works offering audiences the chance to experience them vividly on the big screen. Buñuel’s 1954 adaptation of Wuthering Heights is screening on February 12, just in time for Valentine’s Day and coinciding with Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming version. His bold reimagining of Emily Brontë’s classic tale stars Irasema Dilián and Jorge Mistral. Further films in this series include The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Belle de jour, That Obscure Object of Desire, Diary of a Chambermaid, Él, Los Olvidados, L’Âge d’or, Un chien andalou, and The Exterminating Angel.

Black History Month
TIFF Cinematheque is celebrating Black History Month throughout February with Thyrone Tommy’s Learn to Swim (TIFF ’21, Canada’s Top Ten), a surreal jazz-infused romance, and Yashaddai Owens’ Jimmy, which imagines a young James Baldwin’s first impressions of Paris. TIFF Next Wave Presents Mohamed Ahmed’s A Tribe Called Love on February 4, the first Somali-Canadian narrative feature — a modern take on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet — with Ahmed in attendance. Co-presented by Say Somaali.

Lunar New Year
Get ready to usher in the Year of the Fire Horse, beginning on February 17, with a special screening of Julia Kwan’s Eve and the Fire Horse (TIFF ‘05) and activations inspired by the year’s focus on passion, dynamism, and change. More information will be available on tiff.net January 15.

TIFF Family Films

• January 4, 3pm: Beauty and the Beast (1946) dir. Jean Cocteau, 80th anniversary!

From the Collection with Cameron Bailey

• January 6, 6:30pm: Three Colors: Red (1994) dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 35mm!
• February 3, 6:30pm: I Am Cuba (1964) dir. Mikhail Kalatozov, 35mm!

TIFF Wavelengths Presents

• January 7–8, 7pm: Želimir Žilnik: Labour in a Single Program and Eighty Plus (2024) dir. Želimir Žilnik, with guest curator Greg de Cuir Jr.
• February 11, 7pm: Selections by Jeff Wall, co-presented by MOCA Toronto

See the North presented by MUBI
Join Lead Canadian Programmer and series curator Jason Anderson

• January 20, 6:30pm: Standout Shorts by Breakout Directors with Jason Anderson
• February 10, 6:30pm: Learn to Swim (2021) dir. Thyrone Tommy

TIFF Next Wave Presents

• January 21, 7pm: The Iron Giant (1999) dir. Brad Bird, 35mm!
• February 4, 6:30pm: A Tribe Called Love (2025) dir. Mohamed Ahmed

MDFF Selects

• January 29, 6:30pm: The Sparrow in the Chimney (2024) dir. Ramon Zürcher, Toronto Premiere!

Special Screenings

• February 14, 4:00pm: Woman Is the Future of Man (2004) dir. Hong Sang-soo, Valentine’s Day!

TIFF Public Programming Spotlight: Special Guests & Signature Events 

• January 14, 7:30pm: TIFF Advance Screening: Sirāt (2025) dir. Oliver Laxe, live virtual Q&A with the director
  Launching the TIFF Cinematheque series Oliver Laxe: Modern Mystic, TIFF ’25 sensation Sirāt is the Cannes Jury Prize–winning director’s latest feature film and Spain’s official Oscar entry. The film makes its theatrical debut at TIFF Lightbox and features a texturally rich and award-winning score by electronic composer Kanding Ray, enhanced by Dolby Atmos.
• January 28 7pm: TIFF Advance Screening: 3670 (2025) dir. Park Joonho, live virtual Q&A with the director
  Winner of four awards at the renowned Jeonju International Film Festival, the acclaimed Korean independent film 3670 is a tender and luminous portrayal of North Korean defector communities and LGBTQ+ communities in contemporary Korea. Presented in partnership with HanVoice, an international charity in Canada working to improve human rights in North Korea, and Rainbow Railroad, a global not-for-profit organization that helps at-risk LGBTQI+ people get to safety worldwide.

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About TIFF
TIFF is a not-for-profit cultural organization with a mission to transform the way people see the world through film. A global leader in film and entertainment, TIFF initiatives include the annual Toronto International Film Festival® in September; TIFF Lightbox, which features five cinemas, learning and entertainment facilities; the Donald Shebib TIFF Film Circuit, an innovative national distribution program; and the TIFF Content Market launching in 2026. The organization generates an estimated annual economic impact of $240 million CAD. TIFF Lightbox is generously supported by contributors including the Province of Ontario, the Government of Canada, the City of Toronto, the Reitman family (Ivan Reitman, Agi Mandel, and Susan Michaels), The Daniels Corporation, and RBC. For more information, visit tiff.net.

TIFF is generously supported by Major Sponsors RBC and Visa, and Major Supporters: the Government of Canada, Government of Ontario, and City of Toronto.

TIFF Cinematheque is supported by Ontario Creates and Canada Council for the Arts.