TIFF16 Hierarchy

Key
Saw at TIFF Proper (between Sept. 8-18)
Saw at Cannes, Berlinale, or Sundance
Saw at a TIFF pre-festival press screening
– Saw a screener of some kind


Tier 0 [A/A+]

Tier 1 [A-]
Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade) – 8.4
Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello) – 8.2

Tier 2 [B+]
Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt) – 7.4
Elle (Paul Verhoeven) – 7.3
The Dreamed Path (Angela Schanelec) – 7.1
Yourself and Yours (Hong Sang-soo) – 7.1
Paterson (Jim Jarmusch) – 7.1
The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra) – 7.0

Tier 3 [B]
A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies) – 6.9
The Human Surge (Eduardo Williams) – 6.9
Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas) – 6.6
La La Land (Damien Chazelle) – 6.6
Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho) – 6.5
Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan) – 6.5
Safari (Ulrich Seidl) – 6.5
Kékszakállú (Gastón Solnicki) – 6.4
Mister Universo (Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel) – 6.4
The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi) – 6.4
Salt and Fire (Werner Herzog) – 6.2

Tier 4 [B-]
Hermia & Helena (Matías Piñeiro) – 6.1
Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve) – 6.0
Arrival (Denis Villeneuve) – 6.0
(re)ASSIGNMENT (Walter Hill) – 6.0
Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids (Jonathan Demme) – 6.0
Christine (Antonio Campos) – 6.0
Mimosas (Oliver Laxe) – 5.9
The Rehearsal (Alison Maclean) – 5.9
A Decent Woman (Lukas Valenta Rinner) – 5.8
Werewolf (Ashley McKenzie) – 5.8
Fire at Sea (Gianfranco Rosi) – 5.8
I Had Nowhere to Go (Douglas Gordon) – 5.8
Raw (Julia Ducournau) – 5.7
The Unknown Girl (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne) – 5.7
Dog Eat Dog (Paul Schrader) – 5.7
Harmonium (Kôji Fukada) – 5.6
Daguerrotype (Kiyoshi Kurosawa) – 5.5
I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach) – 5.5
My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (Dash Shaw) – 5.5
Austerlitz (Sergei Loznitsa) – 5.4

Tier 5 [C+]
Searchers (Zacharias Kunuk) – 5.3
Sweet Dreams (Marco Bellocchio) – 5.3
The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez (Wim Wenders) – 5.2
The Ornithologist (João Pedro Rodrigues) – 5.1
Jackie (Pable Larraín) – 5.1
Graduation (Christian Mungiu) – 5.1
Nocturnal Animals (Tom Ford) – 5.0
The Untamed (Amat Escalante) – 5.0
Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu) – 4.9
Moonlight (Barry Jenkins) – 4.9
By the Time it Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong) – 4.9
Ta’ang (Wang Bing) – 4.8
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (Steve James) – 4.8
The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook) – 4.8
My Life as a Courgette (Claude Barras) – 4.7
Free Fire (Ben Wheatley) – 4.6
The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography (Errol Morris) – 4.6

Tier 6 [C]
Ember (Zeki Demirkubuz) – 4.5
Neruda (Pablo Larraín) – 4.4
Una (Benedict Andrews) – 4.3
Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience (Terrence Malick) – 4.2
The Dreamed Ones (Ruth Beckermann) – 4.1
American Honey (Andrea Arnold) – 4.1
The Woman Who Left (Lav Diaz) – 4.1
Loving (Jeff Nichols) – 3.9

Tier 7 [C-]
Colossal (Nacho Vigalondo) – 3.5
Ma’ Rosa (Brillante Mendoza) – 3.4
Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey (Terrence Malick) – 3.3
The Bad Batch (Ana Lily Amirpour) – 3.2

Tier 8 [D+]
It’s Only the End of the World (Xavier Dolan) – 2.9
Message from the King (Fabrice du Welz) – 2.3

Tier 9 [D]

Tier 10 [D-]
Katie Says Goodbye (Wayne Roberts) – 1.0



Shorts [more or less ranked]
  – AS WITHOUT SO WITHIN (Manuela De Laborde)
  – Burning mountains that spew flame (Helena Girón & Samuel M. Delgado)
  – Incantati (Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub)
  – Ears, Nose and Throat (Kevin Jerome Everson)
  – I’ll Remember You as You Were, Not as What You’ll Become (Sky Hopinka)
  – The Hedonists (Jia Zhang-ke)
  – Venus Delta (Antoinette Zwirchmayr)
  – Flowers of the Sky (Janie Geiser)
  – Silueta Sangrienta (Ana Mendieta)
  – Untitled (Björn Kämmerer)
  – Cilaos (Camilo Restrepo)
  – Anima, Silueta de Cohetes (Firework Piece) (Ana Mendieta)
  – Indefinite Pitch (James N. Kienitz Wilkins)
  – A Brief History of Princess X (Gabriel Abrantes)
  – 350 MYA (Terra Long)
  – Ten Mornings Ten Evenings and One Horizon (Tomonari Nishikawa)
  – Foyer (Ismaïl Bahri)
  – 025 Sunset Red (Laida Lertxundi)
  – Luna e Santur (Joshua Gen Solondz)
  – Ayhan and me (belit sağ)
  – Nightlife (Cyprien Gaillard)
  – Dark Adaptation (Chris Gehman)
  – Children of Lir (Katherin McInnis)
  – The Watershow Extravaganza (Sophie Michael)
  – Strange Vision of Seeing Things (Ryan Ferko)
  – What’s New (Nina Könnemann)
  – An Aviation Field (Joana Pimenta)
  – Há Terra! (Ana Vaz)
  – Untitled, 1925 (Madi Piller)