A few weeks back I made my first visit to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) for a number of years and I’d have to say it was great to be back there, and in particular to get to see in advance a large number of the films you are very likely to be enjoying over the coming months. I get the sense that at last, films are being made and released of the quality and in the numbers, we were accustomed to pre-pandemic, which bodes well for a cinema (for the avoidance of doubt, this one) that really needs admissions to get back to where they once were back in the long-forgotten days of early 2020… 

Away from films for just a second, if I may: they do this thing in Canada whereby they randomly select foreign nationals to submit PCR-type COVID tests on arrival in the country, but what with one thing and another, I didn’t find out I’d been ‘pinged’ until the next day and, if you miss the request whilst you’re still at the airport, well, submitting your test gets very complicated indeed. An entirely fruitless phone call to request being let off the hook (come on, I was busy!) cost me as I later discovered, £66 gone AND my phone due to be cut off by my (now ex) provider. That, however, is another story. Badgered by relentless emails and phone calls to submit a test I finally found the time (literally, hours). As I was waiting for the test, an American fellow TIFF delegate sitting waiting for her test said to me: “Let me guess, you got ‘pinged’ at the airport but didn’t see the email till later, decided it was too much hassle and decided to ignore it until the point you could bear the emails and constant phone calls no longer?” Judging by the ripple of laughter that went around the other TIFF delegate badge-wearers in the room, I may not have been alone… 

Oh yes, the films. Let’s start with two I saw at TIFF. All Quiet on the Western Front is the first German stab at Erich Maria Remarque’s seminal WWI anti-war novel – a German youth’s enthusiasm for the war soon wanes as he gets a first-hand view of the horror – and is a relentless, fully realised, heart-rending triumph; and I just loved spending 100 or so minutes in the company of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson’s Pádraic and Colm (respectively) as the latter decides he’s wasted too much of his precious time on this earth speaking to his boring friend to continue their acquaintance, in Martin (Three Billboards…) McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin.  

The Lost King tells the story of (amateur historian and Edinburgh citizen!) Philippa Langley’s quest (defying the stodgy academic establishment in the process) to find the bones of Richard III which she believes are buried under a car park in Leicester; Decision to Leave is Park Chan-wook’s customarily ravishing and intriguing neo noir blend of crime and passion; and Ruben (The Square, Force Majeure) Östlund’s Palme d’Or-winning Triangle of Sadness seems ever-more pertinent by the day in this hilarious and scathing satirical skewering of this world of the super-rich and the have-nothings.  

London (Film Festival) comes to Edinburgh for some 12 days with a host of previews (including many of those mentioned above and many, many more) and if I can just shout out for one of them, Living (starring a never-better Bill Nighy) is a total delight and simply one of the films of the year. Worry ye not, though, if you miss it at this October screening (Oct 10, 8:30pm) it will be showing on release at this cinema from November the 4th. The annual Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival returns (and includes Carla Simón’s wonderful Berlinale Golden Bear-winning Alcarràs), and Scotland Loves Anime will prove its name, once again I am sure, to be self-evident!