TIFF Lightbox 2026 March/April programming highlights

This spring, TIFF Cinematheque presents an expansive lineup that brings together a major Raymond Depardon retrospective in partnership with Film at Lincoln Center; a month-long International Women’s Day programme, spotlighting the late Lebanese filmmaker and journalist Jocelyne Saab; and a rich Terence Davies retrospective curated by the British Film Institute, making its first North American stop in April following its premiere at BFI Southbank, London last year. Plus, TIFF is introducing the new Cinematheque series Animate, highlighting the very best of anime, from beloved classics to cult hits to hidden gems.

Launching on March 4 with Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress (2001), and programmed by TIFF curator Catherine Williams, the Animate series invites fans to TIFF Lightbox each month for curated screenings and gatherings that build connection, conversation, and community around anime.

Oscar watchers can catch breakout performances from this year’s nominees Teyana Taylor in A Thousand and One (2023) and Jessie Buckley showing off her vocal range in Wild Rose (2018), alongside Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice (2014), and Chloé Zhao’s directorial debut Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015). Audiences can also check out a slate of Oscar‑nominated films now playing at the Lightbox.

Kick off March Break with an interactive screening of the Academy Award–winning Disney animated musical Encanto, hosted by comedian Martha Chaves on March 14. This magical afternoon features warm-up activities, props, onscreen lyrics, and photo opportunities for audiences of all ages.

TIFF’s Next Wave Film Festival returns April 16–19, bringing young audiences and creators together to explore new voices and perspectives in cinema. Stay tuned for more details coming next month.

Not to be missed: a limited run of Satyajit Ray’s Days and Nights in the Forest at the end of February, fresh off its 4K Restoration Premiere at TIFF ’25.

Tickets for March programming will be available for TIFF Members on Wednesday, February 11 at 12pm, and to the public on Friday, February 13. Tickets for April programming will be available for TIFF Members on Wednesday, March 18, at 12pm and to the public on Friday, March 20. Information is subject to change. Please visit tiff.net for up-to-date programming details.

International Women’s Day Programming Highlights

Sumitra Peries’ 1978 drama The Girls kicks off TIFF’s International Women’s Day programme on March 8 with a new 4K restoration, followed by the Canadian Premiere of Bani Khoshnoudi’s The Vanishing Point on March 14 with the director in attendance, and co‑presented with Images Festival. Later in the month, audiences can revisit Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala (1991) on March 25, preceded by Yazmeen Kanji’s short One Day (2024) in this event presented by TIFF Community Impact and the Muslim International Film Festival (MIFF). The screening will include a Q&A with Kanji and actor Rebecca Ablack (Ginny & Georgia) exploring immigration, desire, and self-determination across the South Asian diaspora. The month-long celebration wraps with a Silver Screenings presentation of Canadian filmmaker Fawzia Mirza’s debut feature Queen of My Dreams (TIFF ’23) with the film’s title designer and Art of the Title editor-in-chief Lola Landekic in attendance for a pre-show talk on March 27.

More Than A Witness: The Films of Jocelyne Saab
March 12 – 22
Filmmaker, war journalist, and photographer Jocelyne Saab (1948–2019) receives her long-overdue spotlight for her role in new Lebanese cinema and her politically committed films about the Middle East and North Africa in the TIFF Cinematheque retrospective More Than A Witness: The Films of Jocelyne Saab. Since her start as a reporter in the 1970s and her first feature-length documentary, Lebanon in Turmoil (1975), Saab’s work chronicles the plight and memory of the people, often deprived and disadvantaged, as well as the militias in conflicts in Lebanon, Palestine, Western Sahara, and those living through major political and cultural transformations in Egypt, Vietnam, or Iran. On the occasion of recent restorations of her films — including the Toronto Premiere of her first fictional feature The Razor’s Edge (1985) in a brand new 4K Restoration — this series highlights the significance and urgency of her voice in this timely political moment. More Than A Witness: The Films of Jocelyne Saab is guest-curated by filmmaker Bani Khoshnoudi.

TIFF Cinematheque Programming Highlights

Raymond Depardon: Human Landscapes with series curator Andréa Picard February 28–March 31
TIFF Cinematheque presents its first-ever Raymond Depardon retrospective on the occasion of new restorations of his major films. Among the greatest documentarians to emerge in the second half of the 20th century, Depardon has left a mark on French and world cinema quite unlike any other, alongside collaborator Claudine Nougaret, who has worked on his films as a sound engineer, producer, and co-director since the 1980s. His films have contributed immensely to the legacy of and continued discourse around cinéma vérité, but Depardon himself has always stressed the role of freedom and imagination in his engagement with the real. Depardon is particularly renowned for his work as a photojournalist (he was a co-founder of the Gamma photojournalist agency and is a longstanding member of Magnum), and his photographs, like his films, embody a humanist curiosity and profound empathy, whether his subjects are people navigating institutions (judiciary, psychiatric), zones of conflict, paparazzi, or the paradoxical hardship and beauty of French rural life. Highlights of this 21-film series include the 4K restoration of Depardon’s moving autoportrait Les années déclic (which premiered recently in Cannes Classics), 2K restorations of his long-suppressed debut feature 1974, une partie de campagne, the César-winning and Academy-nominated Reporters, his beguiling fiction La captive du désert starring Sandrine Bonnaire, and Depardon’s rarely-screened masterpiece, San Clemente, as well as new remasters of his monumental portrait of French farmers, the Profils paysans trilogy.

Film at Lincoln Center’s retrospective, Raymond Depardon: Humanity in Focus, runs February 20 to March 1, 2026. A co-presentation between TIFF Cinematheque and Film at Lincoln Center. Organized by TIFF Senior Film Curator Andréa Picard and Florence Almozini and Dan Sullivan for FLC. Special thanks to Films du Losange.

Love, Sex, Religion, Death: The Complete Films of Terence Davies
April 3–21
Making its North American debut following its premiere at BFI Southbank, London last year, the BFI retrospective Love, Sex, Religion, Death: The Complete Films of Terence Davies arrives at TIFF Cinematheque as a rich tribute to the filmmaker’s vision, spanning nine features — including his most-celebrated narratives and the elegiac documentary-essay Of Time and the City — alongside his early shorts trilogy and a selection of other short films. Curated by BFI Chief Executive Ben Roberts, the retrospective is shaped by a deep understanding of the filmmaker’s uniquely personal approach to storytelling and the lasting legacy of his work. As Roberts writes for the BFI, “Davies’ cinema is one of memory, longing and tragedy, profoundly personal but universal in its themes: the suffocation of love, the cruelty of faith, the temptations of the flesh and the constant shadow of death. Yet his films are also alive with the songs and cinema that he adored. From his deeply autobiographical trilogy, Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes to his luscious interpretations of Edith Wharton, Terrence Rattigan, and the lives of Emily Dickinson and Siegfried Sassoon, Davies brought a poetic intensity to his work, layering sound, silence, portrait, landscape and music to breathtaking, often unbearably moving effect.” This series will feature a selection of introductions by TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey.

Presented in partnership with the BFI.

From the Collection with Cameron Bailey

• March 3, 6:30pm: The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 35mm print!
  
  
• April 7, 6:30pm: The Devil, Probably (1977) dir. Robert Bresson, 35mm print!
  
  

Animate (New!)

• March 4, 6:30pm: Millennium Actress (2001) dir. Satoshi Kon
• April 22, 6:30pm: A Silent Voice (2016) dir. Naoko Yamada

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

• March 10, 6:30pm: Monsieur Lazhar (2011) dir. Philippe Falardeau

TIFF Wavelengths Presents

• March 11, 6:30pm: China Town (2009) dir. Lucy Raven preceded by Opération Béton (1954) dir. Jean-Luc Godard, post screening Q&A with director and artist Lucy Raven

China Town with Lucy Raven is presented in partnership with The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery and The Vega Foundation, along with Lucy Raven’s Visual Studies Public Lecture at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design on March 10, 2026. Both programs coincide with the exhibition Lucy Raven: Murderers Bar, on view at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery through March 22, 2026.

• April 8, 7pm: Light Noise Smoke: The Films of Tomonari Nishikawa curated by Chris Kennedy

• March 18, 6:30pm: Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) dir. Chloé Zhao

MDFF Selects

• April 2, 6:30pm: What Does That Nature Say to You (2025) dir. Hong Sangsoo, Toronto Premiere!
  
  

Midnight Madness Presents

• April 4, 6:30pm: Stuck (2007) dir. Stuart Gordon, 35mm print!
  
  

TIFF Cinematheque Special Screenings

• March 7, 3:30pm: A Thousand and One (2023) dir. A.V. Rockwell
• March 14, 6:30pm: The Vanishing Point (2025) dir. Bani Khoshnoudi, post show Q&A with director, Canadian Premiere!
  
  
• March 15, 11:30am: Inherent Vice (2014) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 35mm print!
  
  
• March 25, 6:30pm: Damnation (1988) dir. Béla Tarr
• March 29, 4pm: Wild Rose (2018) dir. Tom Harper

TIFF Cinematheque New and Restored

• March 8, 3:30pm: The Girls (1978) dir. Sumitra Peries, Canadian Premiere of new 4K Restoration!
  
  
• March 24, 6:30pm & March 28, 3:30pm: Conversation Piece (1974) dir. Luchino Visconti, New 4K Restoration!
  
  
• April 1, 6:30pm: A New Love in Tokyo (1994) dir. Banmei Takahashi, Toronto Premiere of new 2K Restoration!
  
  

• March 14, 1pm: March Sing Along: Encanto (2021) dirs. Jared Bush & Byron Howard, with comedian Martha Chavez as host Sing along with Encanto’s Madrigals, an extraordinary family living in an imperiled enchanted house in the Columbian mountains.
  
  
• March 25, 6pm: Mississippi Masala (1991) dir.Mira Naira, preceded by One Day (202) dir. Yazmeen Kanji, post-show Q&A with Kanji and actor Rebecca Ablack (Ginny & Georgia)
  Nair’s influential and passionate look at an interracial romance between a Black carpet cleaner (Denzel Washington) and an Indian-Ugandan motel worker (Sarita Choudhury) in the American South is paired with Yazmeen Kanji’s short One Day, a Toronto-set dramedy about a Muslim Indo-Carribean teenager navigating social anxiety and cultural identity.
  
  
• March 27, 12pm: Silver Screenings: Queen of My Dreams (2023) dir. Fawzia Mirza This screening will be preceded by a talk with the film’s title designer and Art of the Title editor-in-chief Lola Landekic.
  
  

• March 26 - August 1: Setting the Scene
  The Film Reference Library is mounting a new exhibition, Setting the Scene, which explores the meticulous process of set and location design in cinema. Presented in partnership with the University of Toronto Master of Museum Studies Program, the exhibition will showcase production sketches, technical drawings, and maquettes from the David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin, and Carol Spier and James McAteer collections that capture the work production designers do off-camera to create a convincing illusion of a place and time on film. An opening-night reception will be held on March 26th from 5pm–7pm.
  
  

******

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.