From Cillian Murphy Netflix Hit ‘Steve’ to a Poland 1981 Neo-Noir Thriller With Lesley Manville, a Closer Look at All Toronto’s 10 Platform Titles
From Toronto Platform title “Bouchra’s” credit sequence, where a coyote and goat ride a New York City Subway train shot photo realistically to the sound of Moroccan flute music, many spectators will sense this animated feature.
Another 2025 Toronto Platform title, live action “Hen,” stars a real life black chicken which views the world with intense-eyed startlement. Little wonder. Befriended by the aged proprietor of a now defunct Greek coast restaurant, the hen becomes an unwitting witness of human misery – greed, migrant trafficking, revenge upon revenge.
Toronto’s Platform was created in 2015 to highlight bold, innovative early to mid-career filmmakers maybe on the cusp of breakthrough, the 10th anniversary Platform.
Many directors already have some form of recognition. Belgian Tim Mielants, whose “Steve” opened Platform on Friday hailed by Variety as “the year’s best Netflix movie,” was the only director Cillian Murphy worked with after winning an Academy Award for “Oppenheimer” until Tom Harper’s “The Immortal Man,” now in post-production.
Kasia Adanik, competing at the Platform with “Winter of the Crow,” set as Poland’s Soviet dictatorship is challenged by Solidarity in late 1981, won a Berlin Silver Bear for “Spoor.”
Toronto’s only competitive section, also says something about the focus of contemporary international cinema.
This year’s 10th anniversary edition, as Toronto turns 50, frames the Platform’s first animated feature, “Bouchra,” as more and more young cineastes turn to animation as a means of expression: Just look at how France’s Annecy Festival has grown.
2025’s Platform embraces hot-button issues, as much contemporary cinema. “A lot of varied themes keep popping up,” says Robyn Citizen, director of programming & Platform lead, citing among them war, or post-war (“To the Victory!”) and mental health crises (“Steve”).
“I experimented with perspective: what happens when today’s human tragedies form just the backdrop to a personal success story. Can our own lives be separated from the events around us?” director György Pálfi says of “Hen.”
Other titles play with perspective as a fictional device or a plea for an expansion of mindsets, or both.
“It was so acutely original, the fact that martial law and this moment was seen from a point of view of somebody who’s oblivious to the political situation and not interested in it – which is also very relevant today,” says Adamik.
“I hope that through ‘The World of Love,’ the audience can see someone they thought they knew inside out, someone they assumed would naturally be a certain way, as if seeing them for the very first time,” director Yoon Ga-eun also tells Variety.
“The idea of ‘the return’ figures heavily in many of the films as well,” Citizen notes. “In ‘At The Place of Ghosts,’ ‘Between Dreams and Hope,’Bouchra,’ ‘The Currents’ and ‘Nino,’ the characters are urgently forced to revisit places and relationships in their past to make sense of their current situations. In ‘To The Victory!’ the father and son are in emotional (and professional) limbo because of the refusal of half of their family to return to the Ukraine.
She adds: “In each of these films (also the character’s reclaiming of her narrative in ‘The World of Love’) there is value, if not resolution, in directly confronting the most difficult parts of their pasts, which is a good call to action for humanity’s larger, collective challenges. To gratuitously quote James Baldwin, ‘Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’”
To celebrate its 10th anniversary, a closer look at this year’s Toronto Platform lineup, whose “The Currents” and “Hen” segue to main competition at San Sebastián, whose closing night gala is “Winter of the Crow”:
“At the Place of Ghosts,” (“Sk+te’kmujue’katik,” Bretten Hannam)
Sold in international by Magnify and backed by Canadian heavyweights Crave and CBC, an ambitious polished upscale Indigenous horror/fantasy thriller directed by L’nu filmmaker Bretten Hannam. Estranged Mi’kmaw brothers Mise’l and Antle plunge into an eerie but magnificent local primeval forest – where time melds the Ice Age, marauding British colonial troops, ancestors, present and future – to find closure to their own violent personal past.“The story’s heart is shaped by the land, by its history and its relationship to the People,” says Hannam whose second feature, “Wildhood,” bowed at Toronto 2021 and received six Canadian Screen Award nominations. JH
“Between Dreams and Hope,” (Farnoosh Samadi, Iran)
Mixing tough doc-style realism with softer dream-like sequences, this bold queer love story takes spectators from Tehran’s underground queer community – where Azad, a trans man, and his girlfriend Nora are surrounded by supportive friends – to a remote rural community where Azad, in medical transition, must ask his estranged father to sign legal documents so the lovers can live authentically. “The film is a journey for love and freedom, for a generation fighting between dreams and harsh realities, seeking courage in the heart of despair,” says Samadi (“180° Rule,” Toronto 2020). Ebrahim Amerian (Amerianfilm), Navid Mohammadzadeh Production and Hanif Soroori produce. JP
“Bouchra,” (Bouchra, Orian Barki, Meriem Bennani, Italy, Morocco, U.S)
Bouchra is an anthropomorphic queer Moroccan coyote filmmaker based in New York who thinks back to her strained relationship with her mother after coming. 3D animation mixes with doc backgrounds and recorded real-life phone conversations of Bouchra and her mother. As Bouchra begins to make a film of the mother-daughter relationship, the film builds to a tender climax. Barki and Bennani’s feature debut after viral web series “2 Lizards.” “Being a core team of only four people allowed us to make our own rules, taking some elements of standard animation pipelines and mixing them with documentary filmmaking methodologies,” its directors tell Variety.
“The Currents,” (Milagros Mumenthaler, Switzerland, Argentina)
A psychological mystery drama: Lina, 35, a stylist, accepts an award in Geneva but, having glimpsed a sketch on embroidery in a shopwindow, suddenly jumps into the city’s river. She returns to her young family in Buenos Aires, but something in her has shifted. “Rooted in cinematic tradition, ‘The Currents’ captures the overflowing state of a woman who strives to remain unshaken by her surroundings, while forging a subtle pact of truth and beauty with the viewer,” says Mumenthaler. A woman’s rediscovery of self tale, sold by Luxbox.
“Hen,” (György Pálfi, Germany, Greece, Hungary)
A black hen escapes by happenstance from a truck, a fox and dog and goes on escaping searching for a home to raise her chicks in what first weighs in as a comedic physical survival thriller. Then she meets the proprietor of a closed Greek restaurant, his daughter and her criminal boy friend and becomes an unwitting witness of the tragedy of human misery. Another highly original addition to Hungary’s director György Pálfi canon who carved out a reputation for his wondrous take on human criminality (“Hukkle”) and raising the bar on body horror (Taxidermia”). A second Platform title sold by Lucky Number. JH
“Nino,” (Pauline Loquès, France)
To get a sick note, Nino goes to the doctor’s and is told he has cancer. “What are my chances of dying,” he asks? “I’d rather talk about you survival chances,” replies the doctor. But they need to be fast. The good news is you won’t lose your hair,” she adds. Over his 29th birthday weekend, encountering his mother, friends and making a new connection, Nino gradually warms to life. Sold by The Party Sales and shot against humdrum backgrounds, this is lead Théodore Pellerin’s show, who carries the film, seen in most every shot, often in close-up, a performance for which the Quebec actor won a 2025 Cannes Critics’ Week Rising Star Award. JH
“Steve” (Tim Mielants, Ireland, United Kingdom)
Steve (Cillian Murphy), the headmaster of a reform school for teenage boys, enters his workplace, a rundown manor house, to find noise, chaos, and the threat of violence around every corner. In other words, a usual day—or is it? Turns out a nosy news crew is filming, and he’s just learned the school’s patron has sold the property. Crucially, he’s concerned that student Shy (Jay Lycurgo) seems to be withdrawing. Writer Max Porter adapts his bestselling 2023 novel. Produced by Alan Moloney and Cillian Murphy’s Big Things Films, “Steve” has a short theatrical run before premiering on Netflix Oct. 3. “Many of us carry the imprint of someone who once believed in us. ‘Steve’ is about trying to understand who we really are instead of building walls,” Mielants tells Variety. JP
“To The Victory!” (Valentyn Vasyanovych,
One year after the Ukraine War ends: Vasyanovych’s son can’t remember when are his college finals, his father doesn’t know when he’ll shoot his next film. This, however, is in fact is a scene from his next film. “To the Victory!” sold by Best Friend Forever, shapes up as a largely downbeat ironic drama of static sequence shots of the director’s life filming and moving closer to his son while his wife and daughter build a new life in Vienna, and other friends leave. “How to find the inspiration to live and create further, among the shattered fates of your loved ones and your country?” producer Volodymyr Yatsenko asks Variety. JH
“The World of Love,” (Yoon Ga-eun, South Korea)
A step-up in its Platform selection for Yoon Ga-eun whose debut feature “The World of Us,” played Berlinale Generation and Toronto. The seemingly unassuming coming-of-ager – a sunny portrait of happy high-school adolescence in Seoul – builds in complexity as a vision of livewire student’s Joo-in’s courage and resilience in the face of trauma, unknown and then misinterpreted by her equally young classmates. The film marks a significant evolution in the Korean director’s approach to storytelling, says Variety. JH
“Winter of the Crow,” (Katia Adamik, Poland, Luxembourg, U.K.)
Based on a novella by Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk and HanWay Films sold, and starring Lesley Manville, Princess Margaret in “The Crown.” Manville plays Dr. Joan Andrews, delivering a lecture in 1981 Poland as overnight martial law is imposed. Photographing an activist’s murder by Poland’s secret police, she goes on the run, trapped in a snowbound labyrinthine Warsaw mixing Kafka and Hitchcock, flocking crows and carp in bathtubs, dreams and authentic historical detail in a neo-noir thriller about Solidarity and solidarity. Wild Mouse Production, Film Produkcja, Iris Productions, Film & Music Entertainment produce. JH
Another 2025 Toronto Platform title, live action “Hen,” stars a real life black chicken which views the world with intense-eyed startlement. Little wonder. Befriended by the aged proprietor of a now defunct Greek coast restaurant, the hen becomes an unwitting witness of human misery – greed, migrant trafficking, revenge upon revenge.
Toronto’s Platform was created in 2015 to highlight bold, innovative early to mid-career filmmakers maybe on the cusp of breakthrough, the 10th anniversary Platform.
Many directors already have some form of recognition. Belgian Tim Mielants, whose “Steve” opened Platform on Friday hailed by Variety as “the year’s best Netflix movie,” was the only director Cillian Murphy worked with after winning an Academy Award for “Oppenheimer” until Tom Harper’s “The Immortal Man,” now in post-production.
Kasia Adanik, competing at the Platform with “Winter of the Crow,” set as Poland’s Soviet dictatorship is challenged by Solidarity in late 1981, won a Berlin Silver Bear for “Spoor.”
Toronto’s only competitive section, also says something about the focus of contemporary international cinema.
This year’s 10th anniversary edition, as Toronto turns 50, frames the Platform’s first animated feature, “Bouchra,” as more and more young cineastes turn to animation as a means of expression: Just look at how France’s Annecy Festival has grown.
2025’s Platform embraces hot-button issues, as much contemporary cinema. “A lot of varied themes keep popping up,” says Robyn Citizen, director of programming & Platform lead, citing among them war, or post-war (“To the Victory!”) and mental health crises (“Steve”).
“I experimented with perspective: what happens when today’s human tragedies form just the backdrop to a personal success story. Can our own lives be separated from the events around us?” director György Pálfi says of “Hen.”
Other titles play with perspective as a fictional device or a plea for an expansion of mindsets, or both.
“It was so acutely original, the fact that martial law and this moment was seen from a point of view of somebody who’s oblivious to the political situation and not interested in it – which is also very relevant today,” says Adamik.
“I hope that through ‘The World of Love,’ the audience can see someone they thought they knew inside out, someone they assumed would naturally be a certain way, as if seeing them for the very first time,” director Yoon Ga-eun also tells Variety.
“The idea of ‘the return’ figures heavily in many of the films as well,” Citizen notes. “In ‘At The Place of Ghosts,’ ‘Between Dreams and Hope,’Bouchra,’ ‘The Currents’ and ‘Nino,’ the characters are urgently forced to revisit places and relationships in their past to make sense of their current situations. In ‘To The Victory!’ the father and son are in emotional (and professional) limbo because of the refusal of half of their family to return to the Ukraine.
She adds: “In each of these films (also the character’s reclaiming of her narrative in ‘The World of Love’) there is value, if not resolution, in directly confronting the most difficult parts of their pasts, which is a good call to action for humanity’s larger, collective challenges. To gratuitously quote James Baldwin, ‘Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’”
To celebrate its 10th anniversary, a closer look at this year’s Toronto Platform lineup, whose “The Currents” and “Hen” segue to main competition at San Sebastián, whose closing night gala is “Winter of the Crow”:
“At the Place of Ghosts,” (“Sk+te’kmujue’katik,” Bretten Hannam)
Sold in international by Magnify and backed by Canadian heavyweights Crave and CBC, an ambitious polished upscale Indigenous horror/fantasy thriller directed by L’nu filmmaker Bretten Hannam. Estranged Mi’kmaw brothers Mise’l and Antle plunge into an eerie but magnificent local primeval forest – where time melds the Ice Age, marauding British colonial troops, ancestors, present and future – to find closure to their own violent personal past.“The story’s heart is shaped by the land, by its history and its relationship to the People,” says Hannam whose second feature, “Wildhood,” bowed at Toronto 2021 and received six Canadian Screen Award nominations. JH
“Between Dreams and Hope,” (Farnoosh Samadi, Iran)
Mixing tough doc-style realism with softer dream-like sequences, this bold queer love story takes spectators from Tehran’s underground queer community – where Azad, a trans man, and his girlfriend Nora are surrounded by supportive friends – to a remote rural community where Azad, in medical transition, must ask his estranged father to sign legal documents so the lovers can live authentically. “The film is a journey for love and freedom, for a generation fighting between dreams and harsh realities, seeking courage in the heart of despair,” says Samadi (“180° Rule,” Toronto 2020). Ebrahim Amerian (Amerianfilm), Navid Mohammadzadeh Production and Hanif Soroori produce. JP
“Bouchra,” (Bouchra, Orian Barki, Meriem Bennani, Italy, Morocco, U.S)
Bouchra is an anthropomorphic queer Moroccan coyote filmmaker based in New York who thinks back to her strained relationship with her mother after coming. 3D animation mixes with doc backgrounds and recorded real-life phone conversations of Bouchra and her mother. As Bouchra begins to make a film of the mother-daughter relationship, the film builds to a tender climax. Barki and Bennani’s feature debut after viral web series “2 Lizards.” “Being a core team of only four people allowed us to make our own rules, taking some elements of standard animation pipelines and mixing them with documentary filmmaking methodologies,” its directors tell Variety.
“The Currents,” (Milagros Mumenthaler, Switzerland, Argentina)
A psychological mystery drama: Lina, 35, a stylist, accepts an award in Geneva but, having glimpsed a sketch on embroidery in a shopwindow, suddenly jumps into the city’s river. She returns to her young family in Buenos Aires, but something in her has shifted. “Rooted in cinematic tradition, ‘The Currents’ captures the overflowing state of a woman who strives to remain unshaken by her surroundings, while forging a subtle pact of truth and beauty with the viewer,” says Mumenthaler. A woman’s rediscovery of self tale, sold by Luxbox.
“Hen,” (György Pálfi, Germany, Greece, Hungary)
A black hen escapes by happenstance from a truck, a fox and dog and goes on escaping searching for a home to raise her chicks in what first weighs in as a comedic physical survival thriller. Then she meets the proprietor of a closed Greek restaurant, his daughter and her criminal boy friend and becomes an unwitting witness of the tragedy of human misery. Another highly original addition to Hungary’s director György Pálfi canon who carved out a reputation for his wondrous take on human criminality (“Hukkle”) and raising the bar on body horror (Taxidermia”). A second Platform title sold by Lucky Number. JH
“Nino,” (Pauline Loquès, France)
To get a sick note, Nino goes to the doctor’s and is told he has cancer. “What are my chances of dying,” he asks? “I’d rather talk about you survival chances,” replies the doctor. But they need to be fast. The good news is you won’t lose your hair,” she adds. Over his 29th birthday weekend, encountering his mother, friends and making a new connection, Nino gradually warms to life. Sold by The Party Sales and shot against humdrum backgrounds, this is lead Théodore Pellerin’s show, who carries the film, seen in most every shot, often in close-up, a performance for which the Quebec actor won a 2025 Cannes Critics’ Week Rising Star Award. JH
“Steve” (Tim Mielants, Ireland, United Kingdom)
Steve (Cillian Murphy), the headmaster of a reform school for teenage boys, enters his workplace, a rundown manor house, to find noise, chaos, and the threat of violence around every corner. In other words, a usual day—or is it? Turns out a nosy news crew is filming, and he’s just learned the school’s patron has sold the property. Crucially, he’s concerned that student Shy (Jay Lycurgo) seems to be withdrawing. Writer Max Porter adapts his bestselling 2023 novel. Produced by Alan Moloney and Cillian Murphy’s Big Things Films, “Steve” has a short theatrical run before premiering on Netflix Oct. 3. “Many of us carry the imprint of someone who once believed in us. ‘Steve’ is about trying to understand who we really are instead of building walls,” Mielants tells Variety. JP
“To The Victory!” (Valentyn Vasyanovych,
One year after the Ukraine War ends: Vasyanovych’s son can’t remember when are his college finals, his father doesn’t know when he’ll shoot his next film. This, however, is in fact is a scene from his next film. “To the Victory!” sold by Best Friend Forever, shapes up as a largely downbeat ironic drama of static sequence shots of the director’s life filming and moving closer to his son while his wife and daughter build a new life in Vienna, and other friends leave. “How to find the inspiration to live and create further, among the shattered fates of your loved ones and your country?” producer Volodymyr Yatsenko asks Variety. JH
“The World of Love,” (Yoon Ga-eun, South Korea)
A step-up in its Platform selection for Yoon Ga-eun whose debut feature “The World of Us,” played Berlinale Generation and Toronto. The seemingly unassuming coming-of-ager – a sunny portrait of happy high-school adolescence in Seoul – builds in complexity as a vision of livewire student’s Joo-in’s courage and resilience in the face of trauma, unknown and then misinterpreted by her equally young classmates. The film marks a significant evolution in the Korean director’s approach to storytelling, says Variety. JH
“Winter of the Crow,” (Katia Adamik, Poland, Luxembourg, U.K.)
Based on a novella by Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk and HanWay Films sold, and starring Lesley Manville, Princess Margaret in “The Crown.” Manville plays Dr. Joan Andrews, delivering a lecture in 1981 Poland as overnight martial law is imposed. Photographing an activist’s murder by Poland’s secret police, she goes on the run, trapped in a snowbound labyrinthine Warsaw mixing Kafka and Hitchcock, flocking crows and carp in bathtubs, dreams and authentic historical detail in a neo-noir thriller about Solidarity and solidarity. Wild Mouse Production, Film Produkcja, Iris Productions, Film & Music Entertainment produce. JH