The Toronto International Film Festival always elects a People’s Choice: the festival’s most-loved film, as voted by the regular people who bought tickets and went to the shows. They have not, historically, been big into awards, but that changes this year. They’re not going to declare best actors in the movies screened, but they are giving out several honourary awards in a glitzy ceremony meant to raise money for their year-round efforts.

Meryl Streep is, fittingly, receiving the inaugural TIFF Tribute Actor Award. As the most Oscar nominated actor in history, it would be hard to go with anyone else, as she’s gracing the festival as part of Steven Soderbergh’s The Laudromat. Is that the smell of nomination #22 in the air?

And after the world’s first TIFF Tribute Actor Award comes its second, into the hands of Joaquin Phoenix, whom you may have heard is in a little film this year called Joker in which he plays an emaciated loner named Arthur.

Even more excitingly (to me), is the Roger Ebert Director Award. Historically, the Roger Ebert Golden Thumb Award has been given out at TIFF, so it’s nice they’re continuing to honour Ebert’s passion and love for films. The Golden Thumb has been given to people like Scorsese, Claire Denis, Ava DuVernay, Wim Wenders, and Agnès Varda. This year, the newly minted Roger Ebert Director Award is going to one of my absolute favourites, Taika Waititi. Not only have I loved him for more than a decade, I used his early films as a Rorschach test of sorts for potential boyfriends. I will be delighted to be in the audience when he screens Jojo Rabbit for an assuredly enthusiastic TIFF crowd.

Also wonderful: the Variety Artisan Award will be presented to Roger Deakins! If you know movies, you know Deakins’ work, even if you haven’t noticed his name in the credits. But movie lovers know him, in fact, practically have a cult dedicated to his honour. His cinematography is out of this world – sometimes almost literally. The man has amassed 14 Oscar nominations before finally winning his first in 2018 (for Blade Runner 2049). He lensed Sicario, Unbroken, Prisoners, Skyfall, True Grit, The Reader, No Country For Old Men, Fargo, The Shawshank Redemption…and the list goes on. This year his work can be seen at the festival in The Goldfinch.

And finally we have the Mary Pickford Award for emerging female talent. If I may, just a quick word about Mary Pickford if you fail to recognize the name.She was the pioneering actor, producer, and co-founder of United Artists (which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, not coincidentally). Pickford was a Toronto native and Hollywood’s highest-paid actor (male or female) in the late 1910s. She helped turn the industry into what it is today. So her award goes to an emerging female talent who is also making groundbreaking strides in the industry. Who better, then, to receive this honour than French actress and director Mati Diop? Her film, Atlantics, screened at Cannes earlier this year, making her the first black female director to screen a film in competition there. Her film went on to win the Grand Prix.

Welcome to the first day of TIFF!!! If you’re anything like me, you might be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of excellent programming at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the curating only seems to get strong year after year.

To help narrow the field down just a tiny bit, here are some titles helmed by women, because it’s 2019, and if you came to the festival and didn’t see something directed by a woman, you did it wrong. There, I said it.

Pelican Blood (Katrin Gebbe): drop everything and see this movie. It’s about a woman who adopts a second daughter, and this second daughter turns out to be…well, it’s not PC to say “a psychopath” but basically, she feels no empathy, and claims dark spirits are rooting for her to do terrible things. So the poor mother had to decide whether to give this daughter back (and we all know what the return policy on kids is like), or risk her other daughter’s safety. Because oh yeah: of course they live out in the countryside. This movie is unnerving and fascinating and very, very tense.

Murmur (Heather Young): Young explores her signature theme of isolated women with a 60 year old who starts compulsively adopting dogs to keep the loneliness at bay. The film is stark and haunting, a slow burn that rewards patience.

Abominable (Jill Culton): Culton writes and co-directs this absorbing animated fairy tale about a magical yeti who needs to get home. Audiences of all ages will love this one.

How To Build A Girl (Coky Giedroyc): Fans of Caitlin Moran will be thrilled with this one, based on her novel of the same name. Beanie Feldstein stars as the impoverished young writer who reinvents herself as a music journalist and lady-sex-adventurer. Emma Thompson and Chris O’Dowd co-star.

The Father (Kristina Grozeva): co-written AND co-directed by Grozeva, The Father is hard to pin down but easy to like.  

It’s A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood (Marielle Heller): is there a single beating heart among us who isn’t looking forward to this Mr. Rogers biopic starring the inestimable Tom Hanks? I doubt it. The first time I saw the trailer in theatres, I teared up. I haven’t seen this yet, and if I’m smart, I’ll leave it for the end of the festival, when I can be a big sloppy mess and then just go home. I have such high hopes. It’s almost sure to be a crowd pleaser.

Honey Boy (Alma Ha’rel): actually I haven’t seen this one either, but I’m willing to take a chance on it. Written by Shia LaBeouf about his own life, Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges star as LaBeouf at different stages, and LaBeouf stars as his own father. It might be awful and it might be wonderful, but either way, I’m betting it will be interesting.

Blow The Man Down (Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy Blow The Man Down): two sisters in Maine bond over the inheritance of their mother’s fish shop, and also the covering up of a crime. Gritty and bare, this one was a favourite out of Tribeca and is worth the watch.

Harriet (Kasi Lemmons): I mean, it’s hard to believe we haven’t had a big biopic of Harriet Tubman’s life before now. Crazy. And Cynthia Erivo is already getting Oscar buzz for her performance about a woman who escapes slavery only to go back to help others do the same. Powerful stuff.

Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria): literally could not be more different from the above, a bunch of strippers including Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu turn the tables on their Wall Street customers after the 2008 financial crisis leaves them strapped, and they do the scamming for a change. Hear them roar!

Speaking of which. I Am Woman (Unjoo Moon): yes, that’s literally a Helen Reddy biopic. I wouldn’t know the name if not for my mother, who always had time for Reddy’s feminist anthem (was Helen Reddy the Katy Perry of the 1970s? Am I going to hell for even suggesting it?)

Hala (Minhal Baig): I admit it, I looked at this one primarily for its star, Geraldine Viswanathan, who I thought was the breakout star of Blockers, another female-directed film I enjoyed courtesy of SXSW. This movie is another coming of age tale, but here she plays the daughter of strict immigrant parents, which makes for a very interesting shift in perspective and a fascinating twist in the genre, which never seems to go out of style.

Radioactive (Marjane Satrapi): Rosamund Pike plays Marie Curie, a woman I hope to heck you’ve heard of before; she’s the only person ever to win the Nobel Prize in two different fields, physics and chemistry. This film’s based on an excellent graphic novel, and I encourage you to check it out as well.

My Zoe (Julie Delpy): honestly, I’m there for whatever Delpy puts out, but by all accounts, this one is much different from her usual fare – a psychological drama with hints of science fiction. Yes please. In fact, I’d take two (not to be greedy, but I would).

Honestly, I could go on, I could double and triple this list and stand by each and every one of them. This is me, exercising restraint. And this is you, pretending to believe that I am capable of restraint.

And may I just say, before signing off, that I am extremely proud of TIFF for going the extra mile to present us with such a wealth of choice. Other festivals have shirked the responsibility by claiming that women directors are such a minority that they’re happy to have their programming reflect that. Of course it’s true. Female directors are still very much the minority. But they’ll also stay that way if not for bold initiatives like this one from TIFF. And I think their lineup speaks for itself: there is no lack of talent here. Does it perhaps take more time to find all of these gems? Certainly. But female directors are telling such a wide breadth of stories at this festival, their presence feels essential, and of course it is. TIFF is the festival of the future, only they’re doing it now, and we get to live it. There is no better time to be at TIFF. The women are here. In numbers too big to ignore.