Columbia Film Alums Light Up the 50th Toronto International Film Festival; 'Forastera' Wins Big
Update:
Forastera won the International Federation of Film Critics' FIPRESCI Prize at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 14, 2025. The feature film grew from the short film Directing alum Lucía Aleñar Iglesias '21 developed during her time at Columbia and debuted at the Columbia University Film Festival. The juried FIPRESCI Prize recognizes new and emerging contributions to cinema.
Forastera, written and directed by Aleñar Iglesias and produced by Marta Cruanas Compas '20, follows a Spanish family on vacation in Mallorca as they grieve the loss of a beloved grandmother.
The FIPRESCI Jury statement commended Aleñar Iglesias's powerful directing.
"Aleñar Iglesias directs with restraint and precision, finding power in understatement. Performances from newcomer Zoe Stein and veteran Lluís Homar anchor the film’s dreamlike rhythms. What might sound slight becomes luminous: a meditation on an adolescent’s first encounter with death, and a ghost story about how the past lingers in the present. Forastera is a quietly assured debut, simple yet transformative, marking Aleñar Iglesias as a filmmaker the FIPRESCI jury would like to bet on," they said.
See a full list of TIFF 2025 winners here.
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Original: September 8, 2025
Seven Columbia grads will screen their feature films at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The prestigious Canadian festival, which takes place in one of the most important cities in the film industry, runs from September 4 to 14, 2025 across seven venues.
Palestine 36 (or فلسطين ٣٦), written and directed by Annemarie Jacir '02, and You Had to Be There, co-produced by Kinder Labatt '22, are feature films screening, respectively, in the Gala Presentations and Special Presentations categories, reserved for the festival's glitziest premieres.
Palestine 36 takes place during the British Mandate for Palestine in 1936. The period piece was shot on location before war brought the region to international headlines and follows Palestinians during a crucial turning point in their nation's history.
"In delivering a period film that foregrounds character development against shaping forces of economics, politics, and identity, Jacir more than meets the challenge," wrote TIFF. The screening on Friday, September 5 at TIFF was Palestine 36's world premiere. Palestine 36 was also recently picked up for distribution by Watermelon Films, founded by Creative Producing alum Munir Atalla '23, who acts as their Head of Production & Acquisitions.
YOU HAD TO BE THERE: How the Toronto Godspell ignited the comedy revolution, spread love & overalls, and created a community that changed the world (in a Canadian kind of way) is a documentary illustrating how a hippie production of the musical Godspell became an incubator for modern comedy. Martin Short and Eugene Levy are only two of the long list of big names that graced Godspell in its 14-month run. This celebration of Canadian comedy enjoyed its world premiere at TIFF on Saturday, September 6.
Two other Columbia films, Forastera and The Man in My Basement, are in the lineup for TIFF's Discovery section, which celebrates up-and-coming filmmakers.
Forastera, written and directed by Lucía Aleñar Iglesias '21 and produced by Marta Cruanas Compas '20, follows a Spanish family on vacation in Mallorca as they grieve the loss of a beloved grandmother.
"Far from narrative gimmicks or heavy handedness, director Lucía Aleñar Iglesias relies for her deeply affecting feature debut on a subtle screenplay, where every carefully observed detail matters, just as it does in the painstakingly textured home where most of the drama happens," said Diana Cadavid for TIFF.
The Man in My Basement is an adaptation of hard-boiled crime writer Walter Moseley's book of the same name, starring Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins. Produced by Adjunct Assistant Professor Diane Houslin, The Man in My Basement follows two very different men as they confront evil in its purest form.
Lucky Lu, produced by Tony Yang '20, will screen in the Centerpiece category, which introduces foreign-language films to TIFF's international audience. Lucky Lu follows an immigrant delivery driver after his bike, and means of livelihood, is stolen. The film premiered at Cannes and was nominated for the Camera d'Or for best first feature film.
Columbia will show up in the TIFF Docs section with Cover-Up, a documentary profile of renowned investigative reporter Seymour Hersh produced by Yoni Gilchav (CC '09). Hersh reported Watergate, the My Lai massacre and abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, among countless other headlines. The documentary is twenty years in the making: director Laura Poitras first reached out to Hersh to request an interview decades ago.
The Toronto Film Festival has premiered many Academy Award winning and nominated films, including The Darkest Hour, The Dallas Buyers Club, and the 2005 rendition of Pride & Prejudice. Tickets for the fiftieth anniversary festival are available for purchase here.
