The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is here, and it features many book-to-movie adaptations and films inspired by literary giants. TIFF 2025 began Thursday and runs until Sept. 14.
CBC Books went through the lineup and found all of the literary-inspired titles to add to both your reading list and watch list.
Based on: A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro
In the film adaptation from Japanese director Kei Ishikawa, a woman named Etsuko reflects on a 30-year period in her life beginning when she was still in Japan in the 1950s to her present reality in 1980s England. Reckoning with the effects of war, emigrating and becoming a mother, Etsuko finds friendship in an older woman named Sachiko and uncovers more and more parallels in their lives.
A Pale View of Hills, originally published in 1982, was the debut novel of Nobel Prize laureate Kazuo Ishiguro. His novels Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day were also adapted for the big screen.
Based on: De Oönskade by Rasmus Andersson
Bad Apples, starring Academy Award-nominated actor Saoirse Ronan, is a satirical thriller about an elementary school teacher’s uphill battle with an unruly student named Danny. As Maria contends with Danny’s outbursts, his parents’ absence and managing the rest of her students, she begins to question her methods and her sanity.
Bad Apples is directed by Swedish filmmaker Jonatan Etzler and inspired by the Swedish-language novel De Oönskade by Rasmus Andersson.
Based on: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
In the latest adaptation of Mary Shelley’s gothic sci-fi novel Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro brings the monster back to life. Filmed mainly in Toronto and then in Scotland, the Netflix production follows actor Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, a scientist obsessed with the limits of mortality.
Toronto presents Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro with key to city
Del Toro, who lives part time in Toronto, is a notable director of films he then adapted into novels, including The Shape of Water and Pan’s Labyrinth.
Based on: The life of writer Franz Kafka
The latest film from Polish director Agnieszka Holland, Franz depicts the short life of one of the most prominent writers of the 20th century, Franz Kafka. Born in Prague in 1883 in a German-speaking Jewish Czech family, Kafka went on to write surreal and disorienting stories like the novella The Metamorphosis and novels The Trial and The Castle — leading to the term “Kafkaesque.”
Holland’s film portrays Kafka as a young insurance lawyer, toggling between his narrative dreams and the realities of life and economy as the First World War encroaches. Franz charts the writer’s short life, which ended in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis.
Based on: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet is the 2020 novel by Maggie O’Farrell, who was born in Northern Ireland. In the story, a woman named Agnes settles into a home with her husband and three children in 1580s England. One of her children, a boy named Hamnet, dies at the age of 11, inspiring her husband to write a play called Hamlet.
Academy Award-winning director Chloé Zhao takes O’Farrell’s tender exploration of grief to play within the imagination of William Shakespeare’s home life. The film stars Normal People actor Paul Mescal as Shakespeare and Women Talking actor Jessie Buckley as Agnes.
Based on: Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
Hedda, starring Tessa Thompson, reimagines the play by 19th-century Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen. American filmmaker Nia DaCosta takes us through the lavish and precarious life of the daughter of a late general who is newly married to a scholar. When Hedda throws an extravagant party, she strategically invites guests who will add to the drama, including her husband’s academic rival.
DaCosta portrays Hedda’s dissatisfaction with life from a modern feminist lens — taking on the source material from a playwright often regarded as the father of modern drama.
Based on: It Would Be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo, translated by Elizabeth Bryer
Co-directed by Venezuelan filmmaker Mariana Rondón and Peruvian filmmaker Marité Ugás, It Would Be Night in Caracas depicts the political unrest in Venezuela in 2017. When Adelaida returns to her homeland after the death of her mother, she discovers it has been seized by the militia. Escaping the violence of her neighbourhood, Adelaida hides in an apartment being used as a shelter by a former revolutionary student. Together, they try to survive and understand the chaos outside.
The novel It Would Be Night in Caracas by Venezuelan-born writer and journalist Karina Sainz Borgo was first published and translated in 2019. She is also the author of the novel No Place to Bury the Dead and is currently based in Spain.
Based on: Mille secrets mille dangers by Alain Farah
Lovely Day is an adaptation of Montreal-based writer Alain Farah’s 2021 autobiographical novel Mille secrets mille dangers. Quebec-born director Philippe Falardeau tells the story of Alain and his bride, Virginie, as their anxiety builds toward the big day through subverting the narrative of classic wedding movies. The film goes back and forth in the timeline, mirroring the humour and chaos of wedding planning.
Based on: The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai
Jack El-Hai’s nonfiction book, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, depicts senior Nazis held in a detention centre in 1945 at the end of the Second World War and the army psychiatrist who studied them. In Nuremberg, American writer-director James Vanderbilt’s adaptation of the book, chief psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, played by Rami Malek, attempts to uncover the psychological components that led these men — including Hermann Göring, played by Russell Crowe — to commit crimes against humanity.
Based on: Out Standing in the Field by Sandra Perron
Out Standing follows the life of the first female infantry officer in Canada, Sandra Perron, from her upbringing in a military family to joining the Canadian Forces in 1984 and onwards. Quebec filmmaker Mélanie Charbonneau depicts the adverse challenges women face in the Canadian military both physically and mentally through Perron’s experiences.
The film is adapted from Perron’s 2017 memoir, Out Standing in the Field, which made the Canada Reads longlist in 2018. Perron was born in Manitoba and currently lives in Quebec.
Based on: Stabat Mater by Tiziano Scarpa
Cecilia is a violinist virtuoso stuck within the walls of the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage for girls who play in tourist-attracting music ensembles around 18th-century Europe. Primavera is a directorial debut by Venice-based filmmaker Damiano Michieletto. As Cecelia awaits for her arranged fiancé to return, the Pietà hires in a surprising new instructor — Antonio Vivaldi.
Primavera is inspired by the 2008 novel Stabat Mater by Italian writer Tiziano Scarpa and largely influenced by Vivaldi’s actual life as a Roman Catholic priest and instructor.
Based on: Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Taking direct inspiration from the Bard himself, Scarlet is an anime about one girl’s quest for vengeance. Japanese filmmaker Mamoru Hosoda envisions a purgatory for the main character as she ventures into a different universe looking for Claudius, her uncle who is responsible for her father’s death. Finding an ally in a fellow wanderer from the future, the two test the limits of the afterlife.
Hosoda is an Academy Award-nominated director of numerous anime features, including One Piece: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island and The Boy and the Beast.
Based on: Steal Away Home by Karolyn Smardz Frost
The 2017 nonfiction book Steal Away Home by Canadian historian Karolyn Smardz Frost follows the life and journey of Cecelia Reynolds, a once enslaved woman who found refuge in an African American expatriate community in Toronto. Frost narratively depicts the U.S. Civil War through the struggles of Reynolds, who has hopes of eventually reuniting with her family.
In the film adaptation Steal Away, directed by Jamaican Canadian filmmaker Clement Virgo, Reynolds is represented by the character Cécile, a young woman seeking asylum in a stately manor inhabited by an elegant mother and her naive daughter, Fanny. The film depicts the complex relationship that blossoms between Fanny and Cécile as a psychological thriller.
Based on: Shy by Max Porter
In this adaptation of Max Porter’s 2023 novella Shy, a school for teenage boys in the 1990s is standing on its last legs. Academy Award-winning actor Cillian Murphy plays Steve, the head of the school, which has little funding and unsteady young men. As Steve makes one last attempt at reform, more fights break out and chaos ensues. The movie is directed by Belgian filmmaker Tim Mielants, who also directed Murphy in the 2024 film adaptation of Small Things Like These, a novella by Irish writer Claire Keegan.
Based on: The life of Miguel de Cervantes
The 17th-century novel Don Quixote is regarded as a foundational Spanish literary work, and yet little is known about its author’s actual life. Chilean-Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar portrays Miguel de Cervantes as a soldier held for ransom in 1575 Algiers, years before he wrote Don Quixote. This dramatic fictionalization of Cervantes shows a young man making do with his present dilemma, finding humanity in his captors and forging fortuitous connections.
Based on: Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire by Lizzie Johnson
In November 2018, reporter Lizzie Johnson was on-site as the town of Paradise, Calif., burned in a wildfire that caused the deaths of 85 people. Johnson’s book recounts her first-hand experience and the tragic loss that befell this community, underlining the urgency of the climate crisis.
In The Lost Bus, filmmakers Paul Greengrass and Brad Ingelsby have adapted Johnson’s account of the California wildfire, dramatizing the story through one driver’s struggle to save a busload of children from the chaos and tragedy that unfolded.
Based on: The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley
In the adaptation of Walter Mosley’s 2004 novel of the same name, The Man in My Basement is about a rental apartment that veers into the mysterious and uncanny. A man named Anniston Bennet, played by Willem Dafoe, offers to rent Charles Blakey’s basement for a price too high to refute. When he moves in, Blakey’s in the middle of a life crisis searching for work and companionship. As Blakey prepares the basement for Bennet, he uncovers heirlooms that point to an African history he strives to learn more about. The Man in My Basement is the feature film debut from Sudanese British director Nadia Latif.
Based on: The Ugly by Yeon Sang-ho
Adapted from director Yeon Sang-ho’s own 2018 graphic novel, The Ugly is a haunting drama about a young man searching for the truth about his mother’s past. Park Jeong-min plays the son, Dong-hwan, and a younger version of Im Yeong-gyu, his blind father. Wrestling with moral ambiguity, Dong-hwan falls further into the mystery of his mother as the burden of his own past weighs him down.
Yeon Sang-ho is a South Korean filmmaker and writer whose other projects include the films Train to Busan and Seoul Station, as well as the TV series Hellbound.
Based on: Tre ciotole by Michela Murgia
Catalan director Isabel Coixet reimagines the 2023 semi-autobiographical novel by Michela Murgia, Tre ciotole, for the screen. Three Goodbyes follows Marta and Antonio, a couple living together in Rome. As Antonio’s work as a chef begins to garner more public attention, he and Marta split up suddenly. Then, when Marta discovers that her health is deteriorating and she has limited time left, she embarks on a personal journey to appreciate her life and what she wants to make with what she has left of it. Murgia, the book’s author, was an Italian writer and activist who died of kidney cancer in 2023.
Based on: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
Set in the early 20th century in the Pacific Northwest, Train Dreams follows a humble labourer, Robert Grainier, who works in the logging industry and constructing rail bridges. He witnesses both the feats of engineering and the poor treatment of Chinese immigrant workers. Meanwhile, at home he has a quiet life with his wife and newborn daughter, until the labour begins to ramp up and Grainier is thrust into an overwhelming new world.
Director and screenwriter Clint Bentley has adapted American writer Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same name. His other books include short story collection Jesus’ Son, novel Tree of Smoke and The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, a collection of stories published in 2018, a year after his death.
