10 Great Films to Look Forward to at AIFF 2026
From Michael Dowse’s The Stunt Driver to Josephine, Back in Black and more, discover 10 must-see films from AIFF 2026.
This guest post was written by Carsten Knox, a member of this year’s Atlantic International Film Festival programmers. Originally published on Flaw in the Iris, you can read the original post HERE.
Here we are, once again on the verge of film festival season.
The two festivals I cover on the regular here on FITI and on my other gig, The Knox Office at CBC Radio in Halifax, are the Toronto International Film Festival (running this year from September 10 to 20, check back for more about that soon) and the Atlantic International Film Festival (running from September 16 to 23rd).
A new role I’ve taken on this summer is joining the programmers at AIFF. As part of this diligent, thoughtful team I’ve been watching films to consider for the festival since June. The program is now out, and you can check out the selections and purchase tickets here.
I won’t be covering AIFF for The Knox Office on the CBC due to the conflict of interest with my work as a radio producer, but here where I’m able to share my opinions for the love of it. I’m happy to offer a list of 10 films from the AIFF program that I think are must-sees.
A caveat — I watched a number of the Canadian and International features and documentary offerings at the festival, but plenty of other films that have been programmed I haven’t yet seen (like the Cannes Palme d’Or winning Fjord and Minotaur, high on my list), so please don’t consider this list comprehensive. Check out the rest of the excellent program, too.
Directed by Brian Harrington | 90 min
This does exactly what a doc about a beloved, underappreciated musician should do: centres them in the frame with footage from throughout their career, offers personal insight and intimate interviews with them, shares enough of their music to introduce them to people who may not know it, and totally succeeds in justifying its existence with the chorus of (more) acclaimed colleagues and friends telling us why this guy is a genius. All this while the film is honest about the artist’s challenges living as a human being. A compelling, essential document of Maritime musical culture.
Directed by Ron Murphy | 92 minutes
A delicious, pitch-black comedy about murder in a small town where the family running the local funeral home stand to make a killing. Christopher Walken is funnier here than I’ve seen him in a long time, and I appreciated the film had the courage of its mordant convictions right to the final scene. I wasn’t sure why the filmmakers felt it appropriate to purloin selections from Ry Cooder’s Paris, Texas soundtrack for the score, but otherwise I’d wager this is the funniest movie at AIFF this year — and it’s a stealth queer-positive, feminist comedy!
Directed by Sandra Wollner | 121 min
A family of three, a mother and two daughters, where the eldest daughter, a teenager, dies accidentally by falling off a Berlin rooftop following a night of recreational drug taking. We get an incredible long shot where the death plunge is almost an afterthought. Some time later the dead daughter’s boyfriend has been more-or-less adopted into the family while everyone tries to manage the undeniable tinnitus of grief. The camera stays at a distance from its subjects (shot by Gregory Oke who also shot Aftersun, and you can tell), framing each character as lost in their own mourning. The visual excursions (including into the video game Minecraft) signal a hypnotic departure from realism as the key characters travel to the Canary Islands. The kind of movie that perplexes while you watch it, but haunts you long after the credits roll.
Directed by Beth de Araújo | 114 min
A brilliant, harrowing film about how witnessing violence can inexorably traumatize a child, especially where the child’s parents aren’t prepared to talk with her about what she’s seen in a way that she can understand. The filmmakers do a terrific job of not only putting the audience in the position of an eight-year-old trying to grasp complex and difficult adult situations, but also add full of dynamic visual ideas that drive home the real horror going on. All the actors here are superb, but you’ll not have seen Channing Tatum do work as nuanced as this before. Anyone who’s experienced assault of any kind should tread carefully here, but this could be the film of the festival.
Directed by Gessica Généus |103 min
Set in Haiti, this is the story of the connection between a man of faith and a sex worker — but it’s not what you think. The film offers extraordinary compassion for every character on screen, even the one whose mission has driven him insane. I’m never going to forget the scene of the man immolated in the street as the pastor walks past, ignoring his pain. The film deconstructs what’s considered sacred and profane, the costs of a colonial inheritance, the violence between men and women endorsed by the values of the church, and the growing embrace and comfort within queer identity. The filmmakers avoid cliche until the very end where the narrative doubles down on religious iconography, but that does nothing to diminish all that went before.
Directed by Noah Segan | 88 min
This film’s a total pleasure. John Turturro plays a low-rent hustler in a fantastic winter coat. He’s a survivor of some lost time — he doesn’t even carry a phone — as is this film: The script is affecting and witty, the soundtrack funky, and it’s a total love letter to New York the likes of which we so rarely see these days. And we get a Miller’s Crossing reunion with Steve Buscemi and a Do The Right Thing reunion with Giancarlo Esposito. Essential.
Directed by Ivan Marković | 76 min
This one triggered visual references as diverse as Manufactured Landscapes and Blade Runner 2049. It’s evocative, even poetic filmmaking set in a Cambodian construction zone, characters set against a forest of recently built high-rises where there once was a fishing village. The film is a slow-cinema treatise on the alienation (and the beauty) of new urban spaces, transporting in the visuals, the concrete brutalism set against the lush jungle, but is especially impressive in its enveloping, gorgeous sound design. A pure cinematic experience, hypnotic, even as it is surprisingly concise.
Directed by Pegah Ahangarani | 95 min
A fascinating archive of film footage and photographs from the filmmaker’s life in Iran, starting with the “legend” of her father, a filmmaker and soldier, who lost his will to fight when the Iranian authorities executed his best friend. Then the story shifts to her relationship with a teacher, unjustly expelled. Then we get the story of the filmmaker’s mother, her own experience as an actor, her uncle’s student political life, and so on. It’s a testament to a creative family, lived through these oppressions, and the upheavals through to the present day. The power and creativity of Iranian cinema reaching the outside world through this period of oppression continues to astonish; this personal document adds to those accounts. Winner of the top documentary prize at Cannes.
Directed by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun | 101 min
A fable of female power set in the Ennedi Plateau in Northeastern Chad. The cinematography is the star here, though Maïmouna Miawama, playing teenaged Kellou, is nearly as magnetic. This is a story of broad strokes, a simplicity making for a more universal tale of the superstitious fear of men, clutching to power in the face of a quiet sisterhood and forces they don’t understand. An extraordinarily beautiful film.
Directed by Michael Dowse | 89 min
Michael Dowse is the closest thing English Canada has to a crowd-pleasing mainstream filmmaker. From FUBAR to It’s All Gone Pete Tong to Goon to The F Word, he always brings a certain, undeniable charm to his projects. After a few American-made movies he’s back with a slice of Canadiana, based on a National Film Board documentary about real-life Canadian daredevil driver Ken Carter. This is an ode to Canadian culture of the 1970s, from the terrible hair to the polyester suits to the stubby beer bottles. It’s also an enthusiastic paean to insecure dreamers who want to achieve. In fact, the whole picture could be an analogy on the effort just to make a feature film in this country. Jay Baruchel is terrific as Ken Carter, with solid support from Ed Helms, Ben Foster, Laurence Leboeuf and Halifax actor Joe Cobden as the NFB filmmaker making a documentary about Carter. It’s scrappy and shaggy, but a lot of fun.
I want to mention a couple of bonus films, documentaries very much worth your time if you have interest in the outsized influence of our sister province to the northeast: Smash & Grab: The Rebel Cinema of Mike Jones and Captain Newfoundland. The former is about the filmmaker who helped bring CODCO to the world, the latter about Geoff Stirling, the deeply weird, wildly successful founder of NTV, the first 24-hour TV station in the world — and a whole lot more. I’ll be moderating a free panel with the filmmakers on Saturday, September 19, please stop by.
One last note — A big thanks to Seth Smith and Nancy Urich for inviting me to be a small part of Permanent Damage, a film I won’t otherwise be talking about because my voice is in it!
The 46th annual Atlantic International Film Festival will take place from September 16 to 23, 2026, inviting film lovers, industry professionals, and audiences to come together in celebration of cinema. Thanks for stopping by! See you at the festival.
