Films at Toronto International Film Festival: Stirring Alarms and Provoking Thought
Some of the most pressing films presented at this year's Toronto International Film Festival eschew the role of providing comfort. Orwell: 2+2=5, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein function as cautionary showcases. At their pinnacle, they serve as award - worthy symbols of alarm. These films, with the first two being documentaries, transcend mere entertainment. They grapple with fragmented humanity, the dynamics of closeness and distance amidst Israel's siege of Gaza, and a creation that has slipped from our control. This is the true power of cinema - to question rather than to merely facilitate.
Orwell: 2+2=5
Director Raoul Peck, renowned for 2016's I Am Not Your Negro, crafted Orwell: 2+2=5 not as a conventional documentary. Instead, it's a bold challenge, the kind of unvarnished truth that authoritarian regimes treat as forbidden.
A Vivid Exploration of Authoritarianism
The film depicts the insidious encroachment of authoritarianism, not from an academic remove but as a disquieting, visceral lesson in the present. British actor Damian Lewis reads George Orwell’s final musings - his letters, essays, and diaries - with an almost clinical rhythm. These reflections are layered over raw, jarring imagery: the ruins of Gaza, Donald Trump’s distorted truths, and the online mechanisms of misinformation that fuel our inclination to ignore the unthinkable.
Peck, hailing from Haiti, a country shaped by authoritarian rule, remarks, “That’s unfortunately our capacity … to forget, our capacity to repress.” He further elaborates, “Hitler wrote a book, Mein Kampf. He explicitly stated what he intended to do, and he carried it out. Yet, the entire German and European societies refused to believe him - they regarded him as a joke. They thought they could control him, believing that the modern world couldn't sink so low. They couldn't fathom the occurrence of genocide, despite it being written.”
A Critique of Numbness
The film is less an appeal to our pre - existing knowledge and more a critique of our indifference. Visually, it's haunting. Words like “doublespeak” (language designed to obfuscate or mislead), “newspeak” (a controlled vocabulary to restrict thought), “thoughtcrime” (the criminalization of dissenting ideas), and “freedom is slavery” (the manipulation of truth to enforce obedience) appear on the screen, overlaid on contemporary images of conflict, political spectacles, and media manipulation.
Peck discovered Orwell through a kindred perspective. “Orwell grew up on the periphery of that world,” he says. “So his view and analysis allowed me to find myself. I discovered Orwell as a kindred spirit, and this was a crucial, visceral connection. It was human.” For Peck, Orwell’s essays, especially “Why I Write,” revealed a writer's awareness of his role in confronting injustice - a sensibility that permeates every frame of Orwell: 2+2=5.
Infographics expose uncomfortable truths: the widening wealth gap and the contrast between government promises and Gaza’s destruction. Peck frames Orwell in the digital age: “It's essentially Orwell’s world, with the tools to manipulate more easily today. How can one manipulate? How can one gain power and control everything? Authoritarian terrorism means rewriting history. Now, with fake news, it can be done with a click. Just give a prompt, and a different narrative is created.” He emphasizes that Orwell’s analysis was grounded in real regimes, not prophecy: “You simply apply it to your current situation and re - evaluate.”
In essence, the film compellingly, yet uncomfortably, forces us to face what we'd rather deny: that a writer, a weaver of both truth and fiction, could envision a future that now seems like our present. Our self - portrait is composed not only of Orwell’s subtle warnings about power but also of the nightmare we still insist is mere fiction. “They inundate you with information, lies, action, arrest people in the streets, and instill fear,” Peck adds. “They terrorize, and it's effective. It's an incredible assault.”
Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk
While Orwell: 2+2=5 cautions us about apathy towards authoritarianism, Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk compels us to confront the daily realities of life under military control, specifically in Gaza.
An Unlikely Connection
In early 2024, Iranian - born director Sepideh Farsi arrived in Cairo with intentions to document, only to find Gaza's gates closed to her. A Palestinian refugee suggested she contact Fatma Hassouna, a 24 - year - old photographer in Gaza. Through Hassouna's camera and voice, Farsi found the only accessible window. “I've never had such a profound relationship with someone I've never met … this feeling of being trapped in a country you can't leave,” Farsi tells WIRED. “Then, there's the magic of the encounter, the human alchemy, and her smile was infectious.”
A Portrait of Resilience
Put Your Soul is more than a record of an individual's life during a brutal military siege; it presents the war and the perseverance of a single life as intertwined. It posits that genocide, and all that enables it, always aims for one thing: erasure. However, Hassouna’s smile, present throughout the 112 - minute film via video calls and tenuous connections, makes this goal unattainable.
The opening shots of Hassouna and Farsi introducing themselves ground the film in a perspective that is both personal and socially relevant. They discuss dreams, traveling to fashion shows, Hassouna's hopes for the war to end, while Farsi occasionally interrupts to muse about her household cat's wanderings.
Through the film, Hassouna emerges not just as a photographer but as a witness to life's tenacity. She sings, writes, and captures the world in small, persistent flashes of beauty - sunsets, gestures, fleeting moments. Israel’s military pressure is palpable, but in her eyes and through her lens, resilience is not heroic but a dogged will to survive.
Their conversations are interrupted by poor connections, cut - offs, and pixelated resolutions. Farsi embraced these glitches as part of the film's narrative, allowing audiences to experience her frustration and the peculiarity of connecting with Gaza. “By retaining these pauses and disconnections, I'm conveying the strange nature of our connection to Gaza. It's unreachable, yet it is. It's like another planet.”
For Farsi, making the film was like living in two worlds simultaneously: recording Hassouna from afar while also being closely present as a friend, witness, and fellow human. “We were both in the process of filming and being filmed, in a way,” she reflects. “I had to remain natural but also maintain some control as a filmmaker. I needed to react appropriately to her.”
The film is a powerful portrayal of Palestinian humanity, a dimension often overlooked by mainstream media, as seen through Hassouna. It's also a film of reckoning. As months pass, Farsi and Hassouna’s conversations confront the harsh realities of life under siege: constant bombings, sniper fire, days without food, as recounted by Hassouna. Sometimes, she forgets the questions due to the effects of hunger, and Farsi always keeps her at the center. “I didn't want to include graphic images of Gaza or raw footage in this film. I had to focus on the human face in a different way,” says Farsi. “There's a virtue to be shown, and if we don't, how will people know?”
Farsi remembers Hassouna’s smile - playful, melancholic, present in poetry or sunlight. Even in hunger or fatigue, she would smile. “Absolutely unforgettable, her smile,” Farsi adds. The film offers no neat closure as there is none to be had.
On April 16, 2025, a day after the film's Cannes selection, Hassouna was killed along with 10 family members, including her pregnant sister, in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Gaza City’s Al - Tuffah neighborhood. Her death transforms the film into both a memorial and an indictment. Farsi reflects, “When the film was completed, I thought we had accomplished something together. Then she was taken away and killed in a targeted, horrible manner. I travel a lot with the film, and it's strange to present it alone without Fatim to talk about her so intensely. I'm there to represent both of us.”
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein scrutinizes the concept of creation. This isn't merely a tale of science and monsters; it's a haunting convergence of ambition and humanity. Like Mary Shelley before him, del Toro resurrects a tormented genius, where monstrosity and humanity are intertwined. Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein transcends the simplicity of villainy, revealing the complex truths of a man who is both creator and created.
A Reimagined Tale
As Del Toro told Variety at Cannes in May: “Somebody asked me if it has really scary scenes. For the first time, I considered that. It's an emotional story for me. It's as personal as anything. I'm asking questions about being a father, being a son … I'm not making a horror movie - ever. I'm not aiming for that.”
Del Toro re - animates the well - known story of science running amok and ambition outstripping our ability to account for its consequences. Gothic - inspired labs and elaborate wardrobes frame the creature (Jacob Elordi), whose scars are softened, jawline sculpted - designed to evoke sympathy. Del Toro doesn't recreate Shelley’s horror; instead, he asks viewers to empathize with a creation that should, by all accounts, repel them.
To be sure, much of Frankenstein is highly theatrical, balancing Shelley’s lessons with the sentimental flourishes characteristic of a Del Toro film. It leans on familiar motifs of forgiveness and our capacity for self - correction, though sometimes without fully earning these moments.
Relevance in the Age of AI
Frankenstein isn't an explicitly didactic film like the two previously discussed, but it sounds an alarm within the glitzy framework of a big - studio Hollywood film. Just as Frankenstein stitched life from the inanimate, we now teeter on the brink of our own experiment with AI, which promises to reshape the world in ways that both terrify and seduce, eluding our moral comprehension.
Like Victor, who is warned about the dangers of his inner Prometheus by love interest Elizabeth Lavenza (Mia Goth), the architects of our artificial minds - the Sam Altmans, Demis Hassabis, Elon Musks - operate in a realm between awe and terror, crafting intelligences that mirror us with uncanny precision and a threat that seems both abstract and immediate. They are our modern Frankensteins, not in a horror - inducing sense but in the quiet, persistent way their creations prompt reflection.
It's the film’s emphasis on the creature’s interiority that lingers. Elordi’s Frankenstein is alive not only in body but in feeling, gesture, and the way he occupies space as both the product and exploration of his maker’s ambition. It compels us to confront the weight of creation and the responsibility of what we bring into existence.
Frankenstein doesn't lecture on AI directly. But in the shadow of ChatGPT, AlphaFold, and Neuralink, it's difficult to overlook an allegory that is uniquely applicable to our era: the thrill of invention, the allure of power, and the precariousness of a life - artificial or otherwise - that slips from our grasp, compelling us to consider what it means to create, to care for, and to witness what we create and enable.
