Last year’s Midnight Madness selection at the Toronto International Film Festival produced one of the biggest genre success stories in recent memory with Obsession, which went on to become the highest-grossing festival acquisition of all time after being picked up by Focus Features. That means all eyes are on this year’s lineup to see if Midnight Madness has another breakout hit on its hands. TIFF has now officially unveiled the ten-film Midnight Madness slate for its 2026 festival, with everything from slashers and supernatural horror to animated science fiction and offbeat documentaries making the cut.
One of the biggest attractions will be a special screening (on September 9, the night before the festival officially begins) of Na Hong-jin’s sci-fi epic Hope, which generated major buzz following its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. In his 9/10 review, JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray called it “an outstanding piece of action cinema” and wrote that Cannes “hadn’t seen carnage like this since Fury Road,” praising its spectacular action, ambitious scale, and crowd-pleasing thrills.
TIFF will also celebrate last year’s Midnight Madness phenomenon with a special screening of writer-director Curry Barker’s Obsession on September 11. The festival will be hosting a moderated conversation with Barker and star Inde Navarrette as part of TIFF: The Market.
Opening this year’s Midnight Madness program is River, a slasher marking the feature directorial debut of Joshua Giuliano and starring Jane Levy and Jessica Rothe. Midnight Madness programmer Peter Kuplowsky told TheWrap that it could become this year’s Obsession.
“If there’s a movie I could point to as this year’s Obsession, it might be this film,” Kuplowsky said. “Josh is going to be a filmmaker that a lot of people are going to want to work with.”
The festival will close with Moon director Duncan Jones’ long-awaited animated adaptation of the classic 2000 AD comic Rogue Trooper.
The lineup also features several notable horror entries, including The Love Witch director Anna Biller’s medieval ghost story The Face of Horror, Indian vampire western HALF, Paolo Strippoli’s The Spiral, and Sabu’s thriller Arrested Memory.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney is a documentary from Universal Language filmmaker Matthew Rankin about the former Canadian prime minister. Also in the lineup is Eugene Kotlyarenko’s Vintage Violence, which was selected by TIFF’s Teen Committee, the same group that championed Obsession last year.
TIFF Midnight Madness 2026 lineup
- Anchors Aweigh – Matt Barats
- Arrested Memory – Sabu
- HALF – Samjad (World Premiere)
- Kick On – Nick Kozakis (World Premiere)
- Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney – Matthew Rankin (World Premiere)
- River – Joshua Giuliano (Opening Night, World Premiere)
- Rogue Trooper – Duncan Jones (Closing Night)
- The Face of Horror – Anna Biller (World Premiere)
- The Spiral – Paolo Strippoli
- Vintage Violence – Eugene Kotlyarenko (World Premiere)
The 2026 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 10 through September 20, with Midnight Madness once again expected to be one of the festival’s most closely watched sections. What do you think of this year’s lineup? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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