TIFF 2025 Is Stacked With Black Cinema — Here’s What to Watch

Fifty years in, and TIFF is still doing something remarkable. Black cinema at #TIFF50 encapsulates the full range of human feeling, from gothic and intimate to political and poetic, formally daring and quietly devastating. 

There is a veritable plethora of films by Black filmmakers, films rooted in Black histories, films with Black casts, films that place Black experience at the emotional and political center and we are so here for it.

My Father’s Shadow

Director: Akinola Davies Jr.

Winner of the Caméra d’Or Special Mention at Cannes, My Father’s Shadow marks a striking feature debut from Akinola Davies Jr. Set in 1993 Lagos, the film follows two brothers who spend one transformative day reconnecting with their distant father. Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù gives a restrained, quietly magnetic performance as Folarin, while real-life brothers Godwin Chiemerie Egbo and Chibuike Marvelous Egbo bring the story its emotional charge. This is not a sentimental tale of easy reconciliation. It is about the harder, more adult work of seeing a parent clearly.

Hedda

Director: Nia DaCosta

Nia DaCosta returns with a bold reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, transplanting the classic to mid-century England and placing Tessa Thompson at its centre. The result promises a stylish, feminist study of power, performance and self-destruction, with Thompson reuniting with DaCosta after Little Woods. If Candyman proved DaCosta’s gift for turning inherited texts into something volatile and contemporary, Hedda looks poised to do the same with one of theatre’s most famously restless women.

Youngblood

Director: Hubert Davis

After the acclaimed documentary Black Ice, Hubert Davis returns to the…