TIFF 2025: Bad apples, eternity, sacrifice | Festivals and awards

This year’s TIFF has seen three star films that carry their inspirations on their sleeves, grabbing something often out of reach of their screenwriter’s favorite films. His teacher against the student, cynicism echoes “elections”; Another feels of a play with the social satires of Ruben Ostlund like “The Square” and “Triangle of Tadness”; While a third film could be called “defending your impeccable mind”. All three will have their defenders. I am a little more mixed on at least two of them.

The best in the group is that of Jonatan Etzler “Bad apples”, ” A dark comedy that will make PTA groups screaming in relatable laughs for the whole studio picks him up. The always good and larger Saoirse Ronan plays Maria, only one teacher in a private school of fantasy who has a child in her class who makes life intolerable. You know the genre. The little moron is called Danny (Eddie Waller), and he literally unleashes himself all the time, which he pulls on his desk or that I launch a sneaker in the machine in a cider mill. Of course, Maria is retained by administrative formalities as to what it can do on this subject, essentially simply requested to face it and continue to teach. The most interesting idea of ​​Etzler is to reflect how much a child like Danny sucks all oxygen in the room. He attracts all his attention, which means that children who need a real teacher do not have one because she is forced to play the baby-sitter and the goalkeeper instead.

One day, Maria catches Danny who breaks cars with a doe foot in the parking lot, the attractive and the fight on the ground. He is injured, threatening to tell everyone that Maria attacked him. If she takes her to the hospital or at home, she will probably lose her job. People always believe in children, even the bad. So what is she doing? She continues him on his basement. His prosperous class. Even Danny seems to accept his fate, being educated by Maria. But when another child turns out to be just as (and perhaps more) disturbing, Maria learns that not all apples look alike.

Ronan is supposed to be wonderful here, playing the immediacy of Maria’s reckless decisions with the quantity of realism necessary to found this crazy story. And it is not difficult to see here social comments on how the opinions of the most noisy minorities have drowned any real conversation and growth. How far would you go to create a better society? What should we do with the real bad apples in this world, those that allow the vouchers to change lack of care?

These are complex questions with which Etzler flirts more than engages in the end. It is obviously a script that is written in a corner and Etzler seems to be afraid of becoming really dark with the potential of its abduction concept. However, it is a funny and funny film always engaging, which should cause conversations not only on the systemic problems of education, but how they reflect everything around them. In a sense, we are all always in primary school, hoping that our own Danny is silent.

Well -built A24 title by David Freyne “Eternity” Will remind people of “defending your life” and “the right place” in the way he intelligently imagines life after death (and there is more than a little “eternal sun of the spotless spirit” in the way Freyne uses memories to trace the course of a relationship). Despite a strong beginning, and an excellent performance, “eternity” too often seems reluctant to really explore its ideas on love, slide the surface of ideas instead of diving deeply in potentially rich romantic waters. Too long (113 minutes), he also just repeats too much of his best jokes instead of saying new ones. It is not a horrible Rom-Com in any section, but the truth is that Charlie Kaufman, Albert Brooks and Michael Schur are models that are difficult to imitate.

We meet Joan and Larry in old age on the way to a genre revelation feast, noting that they have been together for 65 years. We also learn that Larry was not Joan’s first love – it was Luke, who died during the Korean War. When Larry is choking on a Bretzel, he finds himself in a version of life after death that did not appear in any of our religious texts, followed by his life partner struck with cancer a week later. Meet by coordinators of life after life played by Da’vine Joy Randolph and John Early, he discovers that he is in a sort of station towards eternity. This is the judgment where the deceased recently, which looks like their happiest – so Joan is now played by Elizabeth Olsen (easily the MVP of the film) and Larry by Miles Teller – Choose where to spend forever. Do you want to go to the world of the mountains and frolic on the ski slopes and in log cabins? And Beach World, who is quite explicit? Maybe no men of men please? It calls on many people.

Before Joan and Larry could make their choice, they discover that Luke (Callum Turner) has been waiting for this path for 67 years for the love of his life. It is an existential love triangle that asks if young passion or lifetime engagement is more important. Teller and Olsen permeate their characters with a little of the old -age pace of their bodily forms – some of the best bits imply how much Larry is excited to be able to do things like crouching again – while Turner embodies a guy with playful who has never grown up. Would you go with the one who fled or the one who stayed?

“Eternity” has an intelligent vanity, but this is where too much of its ambition ends. There is a high secondary concept – the archives in which people can look at key moments in their lives – that I have found much more moving than the material of the love triangle, asking me what memories would be played in these rooms in my own life after death. But, in the end, Freyne fell too much from her best ideas, choosing the essential rather than the disorderly philosophy that could have emerged from a real consideration of what we mean when we say that we would spend eternity with someone.

Another film that starts with a promise but leaves the air that slowly escapes from its tires is the deeply frustrating “Sacrifice,” of the director “Athena” Romain Gavras. Obviously inspired by Eat The Rich Films like those of Ruben Ostlund, “sacrifice” laughs at the permanent hollow behavior of celebrities who find a way to remind you that they are the center of the universe while they preach save the planet. It is a film with a large distribution and intriguing installation that cannot understand what to do after its chaotic incidents. It is also a cynically superficial film that seems to suggest that nothing matters, or perhaps all account, or who cares? A film that makes fun of the behavior of shallow clicks must work harder than this so as not to be himself.

Chris Evans embodies Mike Tyler, a movie star who lost his shit on the red carpet recently, making a diatribe that ended with a flame launcher. He finally left the shadows to attend a climate change event in list A in Greece, hoping that the moment can shake the bad press, but he is also the kind of guy whose ego remains deeply fragile. He is more concerned with his hair than anything else and decides to use the gathering for one of these unpleasant celebrities speeches that use a lot of words to say nothing, which will bother everyone within voice.

The party also presents us with a musk figure (we will see so many people in satires for the coming years) named Braken (a Sournese Cassel Vincent) and his wife (Salma Hayek Pinault). Braken develops technology to exploit energy from molluscs. Save the planet by destroying the oceans. Seems plausible. The party also includes singers / dancers known as mother nature (Charli XCX) and its nature girl (Ambika Mod), making a routine that never seems to end. In this event puts Gala-Esque, a group of eco-terrorists led by Anya Taylor Joy. “Green Isis” takes Mike, his nature his nature and Braken, planning to throw them in a bubbling volcano to really save the planet from destruction.

The first act of “sacrifice” is not bad, fixing the table for a complete meal of celebrity satire which is simply never served. The film winds to a disappointing end which seems to be the product of a writer who never understood what he meant on the environment or how much he is used by influencers and celebrities, only that.