Belgian filmmaker Tim Mielants’s feature Steve, starring Cillian Murphy, has been added to the Platform lineup at this year’s Toronto Film Festival.
Steve was among nine other titles added to the Platform competition this morning. Those titles are: Farnoosh Samadi’s Between Dreams and Hope, Orian Barki and Meriem Bennani’s Bouchra, György Pálfi’s Hen, Pauline Loquès’ Nino, Bretten Hannam’s Sk+te’kmujue’katik (At the Place of Ghosts), Milagros Mumenthaler’s The Currents, Yoon Ga-eun’s The World of Love, Valentyn Vasyanovych’s To The Victory!, and Kasia Adamik’s Winter of the Crow.
The Platform jury will be headed by Carlos Marqués-Marcet, who won the 2024 Platform Award for They Will Be Dust. He will be joined by Oscar-nominated actor, writer, composer, and director Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who was most recently at the Festival with Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths (TIFF ’24), and Québécois filmmaker Chloé Robichaud, whose Sundance title Two Women recently had a theatrical run at TIFF Lightbox.
Previous jury members include Atom Egoyan, Hur Jin-ho, Jane Schoenbrun, Claire Denis, Béla Tarr, Brian De Palma, Mira Nair, Riz Ahmed, Jia Zhang-Ke, Patricia Rozema, and Barry Jenkins.
The Platform programme is led by Robyn Citizen. Platform screens 10 films from early- to mid-career filmmakers. Past Official Selections include acclaimed works such as Anthony Shim’s Riceboy Sleeps (TIFF ’22), Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal (TIFF ’19), Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden (TIFF ’19), William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth (TIFF ’17), and Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight (TIFF ’16).
See detailed info on this year’s Platform titles below.
Between Dreams and Hope | Farnoosh Samadi | Iran
World Premiere
Farnoosh Samadi, whose feature film 180° Rule (TIFF ’20) and short film Disappearance (TIFF ’17) both premiered at the Festival, returns with Between Dreams and Hope. In this bold queer love story, Azad (Fereshteh Hosseini), a trans man, and Nora (Sadaf Asgari) are two young lovers toggling between tradition and modernity in their society and family. Together, they travel to a remote Iranian village to face Azad’s estranged father and obtain documents that would permit the pair to live authentically.
Bouchra | Orian Barki & Meriem Bennani | Italy/Morocco/USA
World Premiere
Longtime collaborators and partners, visual artist Meriem Bennani and documentary filmmaker Orian Barki, known for their previous works Life on the CAPS (TIFF ’22) and 2 Lizards (TIFF ’22), bring their latest animated project, Bouchra, to the Festival, marking the first animated feature to premiere in Platform. In this film, 35-year-old Moroccan Coyote and filmmaker, Bouchra, lives in New York and chronicles the impact her queerness has on her relationship with her mother, Aïcha, in Casablanca. Cutting between the film that’s forming and reallife conversations between Bouchra and Aïcha (recreations of phone calls that took place between Bennani and her mother), Bouchra is a humorous and tender portrait of the love and pain that both sides have to understand in order to move forward.
Hen | György Pálfi | Germany/Greece/Hungary
World Premiere
György Pálfi’s Hen, an inventive live-action feature, chronicles a remarkable chicken as she escapes from her grisly fate in this unorthodox and bold story. Escaping from a chicken farm, she finds refuge in the courtyard of a crumbling restaurant. There, she discovers love, confronts the pecking order, and fights to protect her eggs from a greedy owner. Her droll yet touching quest for motherhood mirrors the messy compromises and silent struggles of human lives.
Nino | Pauline Loquès | France
International Premiere
With a breakout performance from TIFF ’17 Rising Star and Québécois actor Théodore Pellerin (whose previous TIFF credits include Never Steady, Never Still, Family First, and Genèse, and the most recent, Solo), Pauline Loquès’ Nino follows its titular character (played by Pellerin) over three pivotal days. Nino faces a major health challenge, but first, his doctors have assigned him two vital tasks. These two missions lead the young man on a journey through Paris, compelling him to reconnect with the world — and himself.
Sk+te’kmujue’katik (At the Place of Ghosts) | Bretten Hannam | Canada/BelgiumWorld PremiereFrom Indigenous, two-spirited filmmaker Bretten Hannam (Wildhood, TIFF ’21) comes Sk+te’kmujue’katik (At the Place of Ghosts), which follows siblings Mise’l and Antle who were close as children, but trauma from their upbringing has caused them to drift apart as adults. When they are both haunted by a malevolent spirit of bones and rot, the siblings are forced to reunite and venture deep into the forest to confront their trauma together.
Steve | Tim Mielants | Ireland/United Kingdom | Opening Film
World Premiere
Set in the mid-90s, Steve is a reimagining of Max Porter’s Sunday Times bestseller Shy. The film follows a pivotal day in the life of headteacher Steve (Academy Award winner Cillian Murphy) and his students at a lastchance reform school amidst a world that has forsaken them. As Steve fights to protect the school’s integrity and impending closure, we witness him grappling with his own mental health. In parallel to Steve’s struggles, we meet Shy (Jay Lycurgo), a troubled teen caught between his past and what lies ahead as he tries to reconcile his inner fragility with his impulse for self-destruction and violence.
The Currents | Milagros Mumenthaler | Switzerland/Argentina
World Premiere
Known for her evocative storytelling, filmmaker Milagros Mumenthaler, whose acclaimed film Abrir puertas y ventanas (Back to Stay) premiered at TIFF ’11, unveils her latest drama, The Currents. The enigmatic film follows Lina on a business trip to Geneva. She is driven by an impulse that puts her life in danger. On her return to Buenos Aires, Lina keeps what happened hidden, but the past which she escaped from emerges and puts her present in abyss.
The World of Love | Yoon Ga-eun | South Korea
World Premiere
Yoon Ga-eun’s third feature, The World of Love, brings together Seo Su-bin in her debut role with Chang Hyaejin (Parasite, Crash Landing on You). The film introduces us to Jooin (Seo Su-bin), an enigmatic 17-year-old high
school student who is curious about and baffled by love. One day, some words she says in a fit of anger cause a major scene. Afterwards, she receives anonymous notes questioning her behaviour, and cracks begin to appear in her formerly peaceful world. “Jooin, who is the real you?”
To The Victory! | Valentyn Vasyanovych | Ukraine/Lithuania
World Premiere
The latest from multi-talented filmmaker Valentyn Vasyanovych, who also stars as the lead character in To The
Victory! Ukraine, in the near future. The war has ended. A film director is out of work, out of luck, and out of touch with his family abroad. While his wife and daughter built a new life in Vienna, he stays behind — confused, restless, and convinced that things will get better. Eventually. Probably. Maybe.
Winter of the Crow | Kasia Adamik | Poland/Luxembourg/United Kingdom
World Premiere
Winter of the Crow, stars Lesley Manville, Zofia Wichłacz, and Tom Burke and is based on a short story by Nobel Prize–winning author Olga Tokarczuk. Set during the onset of Poland’s Martial Law era, the country is shut down just as British psychiatry professor Dr. Joan Andrews (Manville) arrives as a guest lecturer in Warsaw. Taxis have been replaced by tanks; citizens are treated like criminals. As chaos engulfs the city, Joan witnesses a brutal murder by the secret police. In mortal danger and trapped as Poland is closed down, Joan becomes a hunted fugitive running for her life.
The post TIFF 2025: ‘Steve’ Starring Cillian Murphy Added To Lineup, Marianne Jean-Baptiste Among Jurors Set For Platform Competition appeared first on Deadline.
