Michelle Yeoh, Sebastian Stan, Taron Egerton, Jodie Comer, Chase Infiniti, & More at Collider's TIFF Studio 2026 | Photo Gallery

Published Sep 21, 2026, 2:50 PM EDT

In over three years at Collider, senior author Jake has now penned over 3000 articles covering a wide range of TV and film for the resources, lists, utilities, news, and interview teams. Alongside interviewing stars such as Selin Hizli, Rose Ayling-Ellis, Harlan Coben, and Chelsea Peretti, Jake was lucky enough to visit the set of Aardman and Netflix's Wallace and Gromit: A Vengeance Most Fowl in 2024, getting the chance to chat with four-time Academy Award winner Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham. Jake has also worked for other publications, including Agents of Fandom. You can also hear Jake every week as the resident film and TV journalist on Track Radio. 

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It feels like only yesterday that Paul Thomas Anderson was heading up onto the Dolby Theatre stage at the 98th Academy Awards to pick up his Best Picture prize for One Battle After Another. In the blink of an eye, conversation has turned to next year's Academy Awards, courtesy of the 51st annual Toronto International Film Festival, considered the spiritual opening of awards season and the beginning of the 2027 Oscars race.

For this year's TIFF festival, the Collider Media Studio, co-presented by Campari and The Cayman Islands, returned with its most exciting line-up of interviews yet. Steve Weintraub and Perri Nemiroff were back armed with microphones and all the best questions to get the exclusive updates on the most tantalizing offerings from this year's festival, as well as some scoops ahead of other upcoming projects. In this round-up, you can get a comprehensive look at what went down at Collider's 2026 TIFF coverage, starting with some eye-opening Day 1 interviews.

Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

FIND YOUR FILM →

01

What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind.

ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours?

AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.

AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?

AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?

AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible.

AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.

AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.

ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.

NEXT QUESTION →

09

How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.

AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.

NEXT QUESTION →

10

What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?

AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.

REVEAL MY FILM →

The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

Parasite

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about.

Oppenheimer

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

Birdman

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

No Country for Old Men

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

Day 1 — Friday, September 11

The first day of Collider’s Media Studio at TIFF began with a bang, as a flurry of famous faces joined Steve Weintraub and Perri Nemiroff. This included Anna Biller, Jonah Hauer-King, and Kristine Frøseth, who discussed their spooky 14th-century set The Face of Horror. Cristian Mungiu and Avengers: Doomsday’s Sebastian Stan then dropped by to chat about their Academy Award-hopeful legal thriller Fjord, which has already been submitted as the Romanian entry for Best International Feature Film and was a favorite out of TIFF. Also, director Theo Rhys and stars Joss Holden-Rae, Jodie Comer, and Harry Potter’s Harry Melling joined Steven to unpack their fascinating blend of musical body horror and romance, Stuffed, which premiered as the opening film of this year’s TIFF Discovery program.

Riverdale’s Cole Sprouse then joined Kiko Mizuhara and writer/director Eugene Kotlyarenko to chat about all things Vintage Violence. The trio of Michelle Yeoh, Martin Freeman, and Roshan Sethi then unpacked their Irish-American thriller The Surgeon, which follows a retired doctor who is forced to perform one last operation, which was followed by a chat with the cast of River, an upcoming slasher that promises breathless, edge-of-your-seat horror. There were plenty more exciting interviews during Collider’s first day at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, with a full breakdown available in the table below.

Film:	Interviewees:
'Call Me Tim'	Shamier Anderson
'The Face of Horror'	Anna Biller, Jonah Hauer-King, and Kristine Frøseth
'Le Faux Soir'	Michaël R. Roskam, Arieh Worthalter, and Mara Taquin
'Fjord'	Cristian Mungiu and Sebastian Stan
'Stuffed'	Theo Rhys, Joss Holden-Rea, Jodie Comer, and Harry Melling
'Vintage Violence'	Cole Sprouse, Kiko Mizuhara, and Eugene Kotlyarenko
'The Surgeon'	Roshan Sethi, Michelle Yeoh, and Martin Freeman
'River'	Joshua Giuliano, Jane Levy, Jessica Rothe, Max Mattern, and Dane DiLiegro
'Below'	Josh Hartnett, Charlie Heaton, Mackenzie Davis, Jesse McKeown, and Jessica Rhoades
'Closing Night'	Cody Fern, Sarah Paulson, and Dianne Wiest
'Drifter'	Sung Kang and Tamara Braun
'Gail'	Jason Reitman, Michael Maxxis, and Raine Maida
Evil Genius'	Courteney Cox, David Harbour, and Patricia Arquette

Day 2 — Saturday, September 12

The momentum from Collider’s opening day at this year’s TIFF continued into a stellar second day, which began with Perri’s chat with the creators and cast of Clarissa, a Lagos-set modern-day reimagining of the 1925 novel Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Chats with the Purgatory and Alpha Gang teams were followed by a discussion with the team behind one of this year’s most impactful TIFF entries, I Play Rocky, which is set to hit theaters on November 6. Among the interviewees was Anthony Ippolito, who has earned widespread acclaim for his lead performance as Sylvester Stallone. Perri later spoke to Taron Egerton and others about the provocatively titled British comedy Everybody Wants to F*ck Me, another TIFF feature to be receiving plenty of praise for its lead performance.

Following her breakout role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, Chase Infiniti is hoping to be back in the awards conversation this year for her performance in the sparkling new indie The Julia Set. She sat with Perri alongside several co-stars, including a Harry Potter icon. Writer/director Paul Andrew Williams and James McAvoy arrived to discuss their supernatural drama Faith, which was followed by a chat with director Kris Rey and stars Caleb Hearon and Zooey Deschanel about the upcoming comedy Trash Mountain, which has been described by Lilly Wachowski as “beautiful and sad and funny.” Collider’s second day at TIFF ‘26 was even more stacked than the first, and you can get a rundown of all the interviews that took place in the table below.

Film:	Interviewees:
'Clarissa'	Chuko & Arie Esiri, India Amarteifio and David Oyelowo
'Purgatory'	Lindsay Lanzillotta, Abby Elliott, Ruby McGurrin, John Reynolds, Jack Innanen
'Alpha Gang'	David Zellner, Nathan Zellner, Lily-Rose Depp, and Kelvin Harrison Jr.
'I Play Rocky'	Peter Farrelly, Anthony Ippolito, Stephan James, and Kiki Seto
'Girl Group'	Rebel Wilson, Randall Park, Chris Scott, and Jennifer Coolidge
'Onwards and Sideways'	Laura Linney, Rhys Ifans, and John Madden
'Lemonade'	Kim Bartley, Lewis Brophy, and Carla Tous
'Everybody Wants to F*ck Me'	Taron Egerton, Jonathan Schey, Jessica Henwick, and Charly Clive
'The Julia Set'	Chase Infiniti, Christopher Briney, Chloe Bailey, Nico Hiraga, and Jason Isaacs
'Faith'	Paul Andrew Williams and James McAvoy
'Trash Mountain'	Caleb Hearon, Zooey Deschanel, and Kris Rey
'Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother'	Bassam Tariq, Mahershala Ali, John Cho, Giancarlo Esposito, and Adia
Watcha Want'	Mina Shum, Ming-Na Wen, and Isabella Wei
'Magazine'	Alexandra Pechman
'In Waves'	Will Sharpe and Director Phyong Mai Nguyen

Day 3 — Sunday, September 13

The third and final day of Collider's TIFF Media Studio began with the biggest of all our interviews, as a sit-down with the cast and crew of American Hostage was split into two halves. Amber Midthunder and her co-stars joined Perri to chat about all things How We Stand, a Canadian drama dubbed "chilling" and "harrowing" in reviews, before the star-studded quartet of

Kate Mara, Rooney Mara, Orlando Bloom, and Domhnall Gleeson discussed their performances in Werner Herzog's comeback, his first film in seven years. Perhaps one of the most hotly anticipated additions to Collider's TIFF coverage was an interview with Mike Flanagan and Summer H. Howell, ahead of the former's latest adaptation of a Stephen King classic.

Into the last half of Collider's excellent TIFF coverage this year, there was no slowing down. Director Yeon Sang-ho, Kim Hyun-joo, and Bae Hyun-Sung sat down on the couch to chat about Paradise Lost, followed by a chat with the team behind All That She Wants, an upcoming rom-com called "refreshingly smart and funny" in reviews. Arguably the highlight of the entire TIFF event this year was Elsinore, with this seemingly Andrew Scott's best chance yet at Academy Awards gold. He, Billie Piper, and writer Stephen Beresford joined Steve on the Collider couch, with the coverage finishing with chats with Amanda Seyfried, Liam Neeson, Nick Kozakis, and more. Here's your roundup of Collider's final day coverage:

Film:	Interviewees:
'American Hostage' (Part 1)	Giovanni Ribisi, Kristoffer Polaha, Mireille Enos, and William Jackson Harper
'American Hostage' (Part 2)	Adam Arkin, Nina Lopez Corrado, Jonathan Tucker, and Kat Cunning
'Back in Black'	Ella Ballentine, Ron Murphy, and Josh Richards
'Ancestors'	Éanna Hardwicke, Jack Wolfe, Jessica Reynolds, and David Turpin
'How We Stand'	Amber Midthunder, Alyssa Wapanatãnk, Isabel DeRoy-Olson, Cara Jade Myers, and Marie Clements
'Bucking Fastard'	Kate Mara, Rooney Mara, Orlando Bloom, and Domhnall Gleeson
'The Stunt Driver'	Michael Dowse, Jay Baruchel, and Ed Helms
'Carrie'	Mike Flanagan and Summer H. Howell
'Paradise Lost'	Yeon Sang-ho, Kim Hyun-joo, and Bae Hyun-Sung
'All That She Wants'	Andrew Rhymer, Scarlett Bermingham, Annie Murphy, and Cooper Raiff
'Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!'	Josef Kubota Wladyka and Rinko Kikuchi
'Elsinore'	Andrew Scott, Billie Piper, and Stephen Beresford
'The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd'	Amanda Seyfried, Scoot McNairy, and Tim Blake Nelson
'The Lost Children of Tuam'	Liam Neeson, Frank Berry, and Monica Dolan
'Krux'	Tony Vahl and Jella Haase
'Kick On'	Nick Kozakis, Markella Kavenagh, Nikolai Nikolaeff, and Ras-Samuel

Thus, another jam-packed weekend of TIFF coverage from Collider came to an end, and it was the biggest and best yet. From in-depth discussions with cinema royalty about the favorites for next year's Academy Awards to highlighting some of the underrated, hidden gems set to come out of this year's event, no stone was left unturned by Steve, Perri, and the rest of Collider's dedicated team. For more of the extensive coverage from this year's event and beyond, make sure to stay tuned to Collider.