By Jim Slotek, Linda Barnard, Karen Gordon, Kim Hughes, Liam Lacey, and Bonnie Laufer

It’s not hyperbole to say 2020 has been one of the strangest years ever, and few industries have struggled more through the global pandemic than entertainment.

That a film festival could happen at all when seating in theatres is regarded by many as a roulette game with health is impressive enough. That the brain trust behind the Toronto International Film Festival could actually pull off the 45th edition, in condensed and “re-imagined” but still publicly accessible form, was a genuine feat.

Was TIFF 2020 perfect? Nope. Our city missed its annual Starbucks star-sightings and red-carpet dazzle. Was TIFF 2020 as enjoyable as could be expected given the insane circumstances? We’d say yes; there certainly were some spectacular movies to see. And some dogs too, but that’s part of the fun.

Herewith, as we do each year (and here is 2019, 2018, and 2017 just for kicks), Original-Cin contributors tally the best and worst of TIFF 2020 with comments on the innovative stream-at-home platform used this year alongside drive-ins and reduced capacity in-theatre screenings.

Spoiler alert: every single one of us chose the same film as our best of the Fest. But don’t take our word for it; Nomadland also won People’s Choice Award, which makes it a shoo-in for an Oscar nod (see also Jojo Rabbit, Green Book, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, La La Land, Room, The Imitation Game, 12 Years a Slave, Silver Linings Playbook etc., etc., etc.)

And wondering if our pre-TIFF predictions for best movies came to pass? Read our TIFF intro piece here.

Jim Slotek

Best Thing I Saw: Nomadland. Chloé Zhao finds the humanity behind the economic tailspin that has seen town after town across the U.S. (and Canada) lose its reason to exist. (Can there be anything more symbolic of civic death than having your zip code rescinded?). And Frances McDormand is heart-breaking, affecting, and controlled as a widow who has devoted her life to a now-defunct gypsum plant and who joins the community of the homeless-on-wheels, living in her van. Nice to see David Strathairn in something befitting his talents again too.

Runner-Up: David Byrne’s American Utopia. Spike Lee gives the Talking Heads frontman ample breathing room in this superb concert film taken from Byrne’s Broadway show. Beautifully shot (especially the overheads, which are practically Busby Berkeley in effect), minimalist in execution, with an exceptional band that is as on-point with the choreography as it is with the music. There are moments of silly existential philosophy, serious calls to action, voting, racial cris de coeur (including a surprisingly effective cover of Janelle Monáe’s “Hell You Talmbout”). In a TIFF full of harrowing films, this was the feel-good experience of the festival for me.

Best Thing About Screening Films at Home: No lineups. Like the TIFF commercials say, it’s a make-your-own festival. Mine included a personal backyard screening of the Midnight Madness Taiwanese zombie movie Get The Hell Out. Saw almost everything I wanted and didn’t need to grovel for an extra ticket for my wife.

Worst Thing About Screening Films at Home: Notifications and distractions. The one time I was at a theatre recently (to screen Christopher Nolan’s Tenet), I was reminded that sitting in a theatre is practically the only time I’m ever off the grid. Plus, I miss seeing colleagues from all over North America this one time a year.

A Tip from The Drive-In: It’s even more rude and distracting for your fellow moviegoers if you leave a drive-in early than it is to walk out of a movie theatre.

Linda Barnard

Best Thing I Saw: I’m still replaying bits of Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland in my head. And not just the memorable scene of Frances McDormand pooping in a bucket in her van. I’d gone into the film thinking this story of unhoused and busted Boomers traveling around American doing hardscrabble minimum wage gigs was a modern-day The Grapes of Wrath. Not so. Played primarily by the real-life people who are actually living their version of the American Dream they’re not on the road until better times arrive. This nomadic life is a lifestyle and a choice about wanting to live unencumbered and outside the margins. Beautifully shot (Zhao has a thing for magic hour cinematography), Nomadland says big things with a quiet voice.

Runner-Up: There were some better films at the new, pared-down TIFF 2020 but none surprised and delighted me like low-budget Shiva Baby, Emma Seligman’s scenes-from-a-shiva is a dark Jewish family comedy about secrets and a bit about why we eat so much when confronted with death. Rachel Sennott is terrific as Danielle, a morose and underachieving 20-something whose parents (Fred Melamed and Polly Draper) are devoted to her happiness. They drag her to a shiva for a relative she barely knows. Could this day get any worse? Then the smarmy older guy she sleeps with for quick cash walks in the door.

Best Thing about Screening Films at Home: Breakfast and a movie. Pajamas and snacks. All day. Every day. TIFF 2020 rivaled the early days of lockdown for weight gain.

Worst Thing about Screening Films at Home: Expiration dates on screening links. By cutting out all the vexing getting around part of TIFF, like running to and from interviews, making it to screenings, lining up for everything and finding time and a spot quiet enough to write, I’d hoped to see all 61 features. Didn’t happen.

Memo to TIFF: You did it. You pulled it off. I covered TIFF from the other side of the country, 4,200 km away. The digital cinema screening links worked perfectly (except for the frustrating viewing windows and expiration dates). There were occasional audio glitches for press conferences. I could have sworn Sir Anthony Hopkins was excited about meeting Danny DeVito at a film festival, but I can’t be sure; he sounded like he was underwater. But everyone handled these with good humour and patience and while it wasn’t the same as being there, it was a damn fine substitute. And for the first time in a while, it didn’t matter to anyone whether the escalator at the Scotiabank Theatre was in service.

Karen Gordon

Best Thing I Saw: Nomadland. The movie I was most looking forward to seeing at TIFF turned out to be the very best thing I saw. I’ve been waiting to see what director and editor Chloé Zhao would do as a follow-up to her 2018 indie film The Rider and I wasn’t disappointed. Nomadland is the story of a widow, played by Frances McDormand, now on the road, living in her van, and travelling to take seasonal work where she can after the economic collapse of 2008. McDormand turns in a beautiful, subtle performance in a quiet, poetic, moving film.

Runner-Up: I Am Greta. Swedish director Nathan Grossman first encountered Greta Thunberg when she was a 15-year-old holding her Friday protests for climate justice outside the Swedish Parliament and followed her for over a year as her life accelerated turning from schoolgirl to international climate hero. An intimate, inspiring, and surprisingly moving documentary of a young woman holding her own as she becomes the centre of a major storm.

Movie That was the Most Fun: Shadow In the Cloud. Set in WW2, Chloë Grace Moretz kicks butt as she battles a misogynistic fight pilot crew, enemy planes, a gremlin and goes to new heights to protect the contents of a leather box. For about half the movie she does it all, wounded, locked inside a gunner’s cage hanging from the bottom of the plane. Director Roseanne Liang has made a fast-paced action movie that is a blast.

Best Thing About Screening Films at Home: Being able to watch movies in my comfy ‘around the house’ clothes.

Worst Thing About Screening Films at Home: I miss the circus of TIFF, the people: the volunteers, other critics and friends from out of town who come to TIFF. Normal TIFF is an event, and even though it can be draining, and frustrating (last year someone stole my new glasses) it feels like an event. COVID TIFF can be a bit lonely.

Kim Hughes

Best Thing I Saw: Nomadland. Having read Jessica Bruder’s incredible non-fiction book, upon which director Chloé Zhao’s film is based, I worried that a cinematic adaptation would blunt the story’s very human essence, even if the presence of Frances McDormand offered insurance against excessive glitz. But Zhao faithfully and compassionately captured the soul of this extraordinary true-life tale of everyday people who worked their whole lives towards a dream that was arbitrarily dashed and replaced with something at once awful (menial work, transience) and wonderful (tribal kinship).

Runner-Up: Limbo. Director Ben Sharrock’s hilarious, heartbreaking story of refugees dispatched to a remote Scottish village to await status and live among eccentric and vaguely hostile locals is timely, savvy, and a profound reminder that we are all one people, despite the cultural window-dressings distinguishing Syrian from Nigerian, Scot from Afghan.

Best Thing about Screening Films at Home: In a word, home. No washroom queues, popcorn prepared exactly as I like it, cheap jumbo-sized bone-dry martinis and a ridiculously happy cat getting hours of mindless pets.

Worst Thing about Screening Films at Home: No crowd reaction. Funny always seems funnier when a bunch of people are laughing. Also, several press screenings appeared to be scheduled without regard for when public screenings took place, making previews challenging to write.

Liam Lacey

Best Thing I Saw: Nomadland. I hate to be on a bandwagon Nomadland, but it’s a great wagon and I like the band. Chloé Zhou’s first two dramas, Songs My Brothers Taught Me and The Rider, laid the groundwork for what she does here on a bigger canvas, with a largely unprofessional cast, anchored with a pair of warmly relatable actors (Frances McDormand and David Straitharn). Zhou, somehow, slips past the categories of age, class, gender and politics, bringing a cool eye to our common experiences of grief, survival, and the joy of freedom. But would people please stop calling this the performance of Frances McDormand’s career? She’s never not good.

Runner-up: Quo Vadis, Aida? This one is my “clearing the high-bar” award: War atrocity dramas are easy to resist and criticize but Bosnian director Jasmila Žbanić and editor Jaroslaw Kominski (Cold War) find a way to blend compassion and tension, immersing us in the sequence of events leading up to the 1995 Serb massacre of more than 8,000 civilians, mostly boys and men, in the town of Srebrenica. The master-stroke in balancing the collective and the individual perspectives is the choice of protagonist, Aida (Jasna Đuričić) a middle-aged UN translator, who is aware of top-level decision-making and official lies, even as she tries to protect her husband and two adult sons.

Best Thing About Screening Films at Home: I got to see Nomadland twice. Also, snacks, pajamas, and my dog for company.

Worst Thing About Screening Films at Home: We may have surrendered to the idea that film-going isn’t primarily a social experience anymore but a Festival without visible audiences felt like system shock and not a great year for film journalism. From the severe reduction in attendance that hurt good will, to the barely intelligible press and industry screening schedule and inconsistent streaming website, it presented a whole new set of Festival challenges to be negotiated. Worst were the publicity embargoes that made some films impossible to review in advance for ticket buyers, impeding reviewers’ fundamental job.

Bonnie Laufer

Best Thing I Saw: Nomandland. It seems to be almost everyone's favorite film this year. The movie which stars the absolutely infallible Frances McDormand (look out Oscars!) and directed by Chloé
Zhao's mixes fiction with documentary while taking a long hard look at American nomads. It’s absolutely brilliant, unforgettable and will inevitably be a front-runner come award season.

Runner-Up: One Night in Miami… Directed by Festival favourite Regina King is an impressive powerful feature film debut behind the camera. Featuring a stellar cast and story drawn from Kemp Powers' play this film is sure to get Oscar love. A standout performance by Leslie Odom Jr who plays Sam Cooke may finally just get him the attention that he so deserves.

Best Thing about Screening Films at Home: Hands down, FREE PARKING! No trying to find a good place to park for the FULL day in downtown Toronto, no traffic to fight and with all that money I saved on parking I might be able to treat myself to a massage for the cramp in my neck.

Worst Thing about Screening Films at Home: Watching too many films on your laptop is not good for your neck or your eyes (hence the cramped neck). There are also way too many distractions at home, like looking at your phone that is by your side, going to the fridge too much... and knowing that the pause button is ALWAYS there if you need it.

The Movie That I Was Looking Forward to But Found Disappointing: I am a huge Idris Elba fan, so when Concrete Cowboy was announced as a TIFF Gala I was psyched. Not that the performances were bad, and the story was OK but holy mackerel, could the film be any slower? This two-hour film took almost four hours to finish… to say that I was bored to death is an understatement.

Documentary I Can't Stop Thinking About: I have a tie in this category. The Way I See It, which follows President Obama’s White House photographer Pete Souza, had my full attention from beginning to end. They say a picture tells a thousand stories and Pete’s photographs of the Obamas reminded me of the compassion and dignity that once inhabited the White House. I had tears streaming down my face for most of the film and I’m not even American. Also 76 Days, a horrific and eye-opening account of
the struggles the patients and frontline medical professionals faced battling the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan back in late January of this year. How the filmmakers managed to get the access that they did and capture the beginning of a pandemic that soon silenced the world is just mind boggling. It is a real, raw and emotional film that is hard to shake.

Movie that Surprised Me: Tracy Deer’s Beans is not only mesmerizing but brilliantly told through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl. Detailing the accounts of the Oka crisis, Deer retells her own childhood memories with hard to watch detail and heart wrenching performances. A stunning directorial debut by Deer which will undoubtedly launch her career as a serious and talented filmmaker.

That’s A Wrap! The Best, Worst, and Weirdest at TIFF 2020

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