TIFF Announces Wavelengths Experimental Slate for 2025 Festival

Toronto’s experimental slate invites audiences to embrace new territories in film form as TIFF announces the Wavelengths line-up for 2025. This year’s programme, named for Michael Snow’s revolutionary long-take wonder, includes the Canadian premiere of Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions. The acclaimed work adapted from Joseph’s installation is a genre-bending odyssey that explores facets of race, representation, form, and self-expression. Joseph shot to fame with Beyoncé’s Lemonade.

“Joseph’s BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions traverses through everything from the importance of exploring the Black history not taught in schools to Blackness’ impact on culture, art and fashion to Afrofuturism to Black love—and much more,” wrote Courtney Small in POV’s Spring 2025 issue. “Joseph’s film may employ the framework of a news program but, much like the recurring image of a record player used throughout, it plays like the ultimate DJ remix. It’s a work that takes time, memory, archival footage, fictional moments, the writings of W.E.B Du Bois, contemplations of the future, interviews, and social media memes to create an exhilarating experience unlike anything before it.”

Wavelengths also boasts the North American premiere of The Seasons (As Estações), the feature debut of Maureen Fazendeiro. Described as a docu-fiction work, The Seasons navigates histories both real and imagined in Portugal’s Alentejo region.

Other films in the Wavelengths slate include Rhayne Vermette’s Levers, a follow-up to her award winning Ste. Anne that explores landscapes and soundscapes with her signature attention to the textural qualities of cinema. The film has its world premiere at TIFF.

Also screening on the Canadian front is Wavelengths regular Nicolás Pereda with Copper (Cobre). The features the titular character of last year’s TIFF selection Lazaro at Night. This time, Lazaro explores terrains of violence in Mexico.

Alexandre Koberidze’s Dry Leaf puts an artfully personal spin on the road movie as the director casts his own father in a story about a parent’s search for his lost daughter. The film features several key players from Koberidze’s 2021 film What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? reprising their roles. Meanwhile, Ben Rivers’ Mare’s Next adapts a play by Cosmopolis’s Don DeLillo. Lav Diaz’s historical epic Magellan starring Gael García Bernal rounds out the features.

The series also spotlights two Palestinian stories with the paired screening of With Hasan in Gaza and It’s So Beautiful Here, directed by Kamal Aljafari and Basma al-Sharif, respectively. The latter’s Morgenkreis also screens in Wavelengths’ short selections. On the shorts front, Wavelengths pays tribute to series regular Tomonari Nishikawa, who passed away earlier this year, by kicking off the curated shorts programming with his 2016 film Ten Mornings Ten Evenings and One Horizon. The shorts series also boasts new films from Blake Williams, Jorge Caballero and Camilo Restrepo, and Chan Hau Chun, among others.

TIFF will release the full film schedule on August 12 before the festival’s 50^th edition kicks off on September 4. It announced the documentary line-up earlier this week.

 

The Wavelengths line-up announced today is as follows:

 

Wavelengths Features (in alphabetical order):

BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions | Kahlil Joseph | USA Canadian Premiere

Copper (Cobre) | Nicolás Pereda | Canada/Mexico North American Premiere

Dry Leaf | Alexandre Koberidze | Germany/Georgia North American Premiere

Levers | Rhayne Vermette | Canada World Premiere

Magellan (Magalhães) | Lav Diaz | Portugal/Spain/France/Philippines/Taiwan North American Premiere

Mare’s Nest | Ben Rivers | France/UK/Canada North American Premiere

The Seasons (As Estações) | Maureen Fazendeiro | Portugal/France/Spain/Austria North American Premiere

 

Wavelengths Pairings

With Hasan in Gaza | Kamal Aljafari | Palestine/Germany/France/Qatar North American Premiere

preceded by

It’s So Beautiful Here | Basma al-Sharif | Palestine International Premiere

 

Wavelengths Shorts

 

Wavelengths 1: Map of Traces

Ten Mornings Ten Evenings and One Horizon | Tomonari Nishikawa | Japan

Rojo Žalia Blau | Viktoria Schmid | Austria World Premiere

Disappeared | Sohrab Hura | India/Nepal Canadian Premiere

09/05/1982 | Jorge Caballero, Camilo Restrepo | Mexico/Spain North American Premiere

Map of Traces (記憶座標) | Chan Hau Chun | Hong Kong World Premiere

En Traversée | Vadim Kostrov | France Canadian Premiere

 

Wavelengths 2: Into the Blue

I Saw the Face of God in the Jet Wash | Mark Jenkin | UK North American Premiere

From My Cloud (구름으로부터) | Minjung Kim | South Korea World Premiere

Cairo Streets | Abdellah Taïa | France North American Premiere

Daria’s یگهشا Night Flowers ( ل ی ب در ) | Maryam Tafakory | France/Iran/UK North American Premiere

Aftertide | Kaiwen Ren | USA/China World Premiere

 

Wavelengths 3: Slightest Pretense

لبا Land of Barbar ( د ا ر ر ) | Fredj Moussa | Tunisia World Premiere

Conditio Humana | Friedl vom Gröller | Austria World Premiere

Slightest Pretense (わずかな見せかけ) | Eri Saito | Japan World Premiere

CONFERENCE | Björn Kämmerer | Austria World Premiere

Morgenkreis | Basma al-Sharif | Canada/United Arab Emirates International Premiere

FELT | Blake Williams | Canada World Premiere