Amidst the flurry of line-up announcements this week, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has unveiled the 24 features in its prestigious Discovery section, showcasing a selection of emerging global filmmakers. Touting this year’s crop as “provocative”, the festival has hailed the films as pairing “bold creative risks with fresh perspectives”. This year, the section also maintains its reputation as TIFF’s place to discover European film, with more than half of the titles being full or partial European productions (although production information for all titles is still to be published). The filmmakers will hope to follow in the footsteps of Discovery breakouts from recent years, such as Laura Carreira’s On Falling and Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Beginning, both of which later won prizes at San Sebastián. Current box-office king Christopher Nolan even made an early appearance in the section with his self-produced 1998 debut Following.

Following on from 2025’s opener Maddie’s Secret, a satirical US title about an ambitious food influencer (whose festival journey fittingly saw it land at Rotterdam), the festival has also touted this year’s opener as similarly audacious. British director Theo Rhys will launch the section with Stuffed, a “gloriously twisted” musical starring Jodie Comer and Harry Melling (fresh from his strong leading role in Pillion), whose plot fuses love, death and - eek - taxidermy. The other most notable UK production is David Turpin’s Ancestors, co-produced with and shot in Ireland, but depicting 1980s London through a “metaphysical” mystery concerning the AIDS crisis, with with original songs co-written by the director featuring on the soundtrack. Rising Irish actor Éanna Hardwicke stars, with Jack Wolfe, Rupert Everett and Christina Hendricks in support.

One of the line-up’s most pedigreed titles is Tony Vahl’s German-Polish co-production Krux, described as a tale of collapsing morality in wartime. The bleak plot concerns a German village near the end of the Second World War, as its inhabitants prepare for the arrival of the Russian army amid the discovery of unknown corpses along the nearby river. The film features the involvement of key members of The Zone of Interest: Ewa Puszczynska’s Extreme Emotions produces, and Katarzyna Sikora returns as production designer. The Spanish duo Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado first won acclaim with their shorts in TIFF’s experimental Wavelengths section; now, they return for their second feature-length film (after 2021’s Venice Critics’ Week title They Carry Death), with The Fortunate Isles, a period drama about the aftermath of the Canary Islands’ colonisation.

Looking at the international premieres, Phuong Mai Nguyen’s animated Cannes Critics’ Week opener In Waves has another chance to impress, alongside Anna Foglietta’s Venice title A Common Story and Katharina Rabl’s Munich bow Memories of a Forest.

Here is a complete list of the section’s titles:

Stuffed - Theo Rhys (UK, opening film)
Bedford Park - Stephanie Ahn (USA)
Strong Son - Ian Bawa (Canada)
Zjili: A Story of Sisterhood and The Burdens of Excess - Christine Boateng, Hajara Musah Chambas (Ghana)
Seventeen - Justin Ducharme (Canada)
The Daughters of Abraham - Hanaël El Yousfi (France)
A Common Story - Anna Foglietta (Italy)
The Fortunate Isles - Helena Girón, Samuel Delgado (Spain/Greece)
Head to Head - Ghasideh Golmakani (Iran/Germany)
Voices - Deantè Gray (USA)
Sisters - Ione Hernández (Spain)
Drifter - Sung Kang (USA)
I Am Mario - Sharon Kleinberg (Mexico)
Purgatory - Lindsay Lanzillotta (Canada/USA)
What Lies Between Us - Amalie Næsby Fick (Denmark)
In Waves - Phuong Mai Nguyen (France/Belgium)
Salvation - Tom Nicoll (UK)
Magazine - Alexandra Pechman (USA)
Memories of a Forest - Katharina Rabl (Germany/Austria)
Nosotros - Joaquín Ruano (Guatemala/Mexico)
Ancestors - David Turpin (Ireland/UK)
Krux - Tony Vahl (Germany/Poland)
Arne Goes to Space - Lars Vega (Sweden)
We Are Born Good - Leung Chuen Yeung (Hong Kong)