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The Toronto Black Film Festival is back for the 11th year of amplifying Black voices in cinema, with this year’s edition featuring 125 movies from 20 different countries.

Presented by Td Bank Group in collaboration with Global News, this year’s Tbff is celebrating the return of in-person programming while maintaining an online component, with a goal of inspiring the next generation of Black artists in film and beyond!

The 2023 edition of Canada’s largest celebration of Black History Month through film features a star-studded roster of talent that includes Letitia Wright, Josh O’Connor, Columbus Short, Keith David, Ledisi, Colin Kaepernick, Rickey Jackson, Don Lemmon, Ossie Davis, Karen Pittman, Corey Stoll, Cesária Évora and many more.

Read More: The 10th Annual Toronto Black Film Festival To Start With Keke Palmer, Common’s ‘Alice’

The Festival’s opening night will take place on Wednesday, Feb 15 at the Isabel Bader Theatre with the...

Following our recap of the best films from 2022’s first half, it’s time to set our sights on the latter days. This July brings only one studio film worth paying attention to, but on the indie and foreign side we have an eclectic mix of celebrated auteurs and new voices. See my top picks for what to watch this month below.

11. Ali & Ava (Clio Barnard; July 29)

Following The Arbor, The Selfish Giant, and Dark River, British director Clio Barnard’s latest is once again set in Bradford and this time focuses on a love story. The Cannes and TIFF selection Ali & Ava follows Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rushbrook, who play a lonely pair that find unexpected affectation for one another. As Jared Mobarak said in his review, “Romance is thus born when least expected. Writer-director Clio Barnard splits focus as they each wallow in their past, get excited about their present,...

One of our favorites at last year’s TIFF, Jenna Cato Bass’ South African psychological horror feature Good Madam is now set for a release on Shudder next month. The film follows Tsidi, a single mother, who is forced to move in with her estranged mother Mavis, a live-in domestic worker caring obsessively for her catatonic white ‘Madam’ in an affluent Cape Town suburb. As Tsidi tries to heal her family however, a sinister specter begins to stir. Ahead of the release, the first trailer has now arrived.

Jared Mobarak said in his review, “Family and its many definitions are at the heart of Jenna Cato Bass’ Mlungu Wam [Good Madam], co-created with Babalwa Baartman and scripted alongside a laundry list of cast members to make me believe most of the dialogue was improvised. Tsidi considers her grandmother her mother because Mavis wasn’t there. She also delivers a mean-spirited jab where...

Good Madam: "Shudder, AMC Networks’ premium streaming service for horror, thrillers and the supernatural, is thrilled to release the first trailer for the Shudder Original Good Madam ahead of the film’s debut on the platform on Thursday, July 14. The film is the fourth feature from celebrated South African writer/director Jenna Cato Bass and world premiered to high praise at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.

In Good Madam, Tsidi, a single mother, is forced to move in with her estranged mother Mavis, a live-in domestic worker caring obsessively for her catatonic white ‘Madam’ in an affluent Cape Town suburb. As Tsidi tries to heal her family however, a sinister specter begins to stir.

A genre film entrenched in the ordinary everyday horrors in our society, Good Madam explores the generational trauma inherent to South African culture, sprawling from the past to the present day, with chilling delivery and haunting results.

"Don't ever go in Madam's room." Shudder has revealed an official US trailer for Good Madam, a thriller from South Africa that originally premiered at the 2021 Toronto Film Festival last fall. After playing at other fests including Fantastic Fest & AFI Fest, Shudder will be streaming this one in July. Residues of apartheid-era domestic servitude confront legacies of colonial land theft in South African auteur Jenna Cato Bass’s daring horror-satire. Tsidi, a single mother, is forced to move in with her estranged mother Mavis, a live-in domestic worker caring obsessively for her catatonic white "Madam". As Tsidi tries to heal her family, a sinister spectre begins to stir. Starring Chumisa Cosa as Tsidi, along with Nosipho Mtebe, Kamvalethu Jonas Raziya, Sanda Shandu, Khanyiso Kenqa, Chris Gxalaba, Sizwe Ginger Lubengu, and Siya Sikawuti. Reviews say the film as "a masterclass in how horror can speak to race and inequality," where servitude is "a terrifying,...

Exclusive: AMC Networks’ Shudder has picked up South African supernatural horror Good Madam (Mlungu Wam) and is planning a release in late 2022.

The movie debuted at Toronto last year and has since screened at Fantastic Fest, AFI Fest and Goteborg. It will next be seen at the Glasgow Film Festival.

Written and directed by Jenna Cato Bass and co-written by Babalwa Baartman, Good Madam follows Tsidi, a single mother, who is forced to move in with her estranged mother Mavis, a live-in domestic worker caring obsessively for her catatonic white ‘Madam’ in an affluent Cape Town suburb. As Tsidi tries to heal her family however, a sinister specter begins to stir.

Starring are Chumisa Cosa, Nosipho Mtebe, Kamvalethu Jonas Raziya, Sanda Shandu, Khanyiso Kenqa, Sizwe Ginger Lubengu, Siya Sikawuti, Peggy Tunyiswa and Chris Gxalaba. The film is produced by Fox Fire Films, Sanusi Chronicles and Causeway Films in association with Salmira Productions and Strange Charm.

“It’s not that Mama doesn’t like this house — this house doesn’t like Mama,” explains Tsidi to her young daughter Winnie about the roomy, comfortable Cape Town pad in which they’ve recently taken up residence. Tsidi knows the place well. For as long as she can remember, it’s been home to her mother Mavis, which is not to say it’s Mavis’s house: A live-in domestic servant, she has been dutifully maintaining the place for decades for her well-to-do white madam, living and aging and even raising children — her own and otherwise — within walls that at once contain her and eternally reject her. The socially ingrained politics of South Africa’s master-servant culture are ultimately what haunt the house in Jenna Cato Bass’ crisp, chilling chamber piece “Good Madam.”

A quiet, tightly wound horror film, Bass’ fourth and most briskly accomplished feature might flirt with the supernatural,...

South African filmmaker Jenna Cato Bass might not seem like the obvious choice to direct a horror movie. For most of her life, the 35-year-old helmer has steered clear of scares. “I was really sensitive as a kid,” she tells Variety. Even the sight of a character getting shot was too grisly for her to bear. “Horror was out of the question.”

Bass was in her twenties when she began dipping into the genre. She found herself fascinated by the form — what people found scary, and why — even while she puzzled over why most horror movies were about supernatural menaces, ancient curses or mysterious creatures from the deep: nothing that was “real or rooted in our world.”

That question would eventually lead to “Mlungu Wam” (“Good Madam”), a psychological thriller that world premieres at the Toronto Film Festival. Set in the suburbs of Cape Town, it follows a series of...

A matriarch passes and the family swarms to poach whatever they can in the aftermath. Tsidi (Chumisa Cosa) tells herself it won’t matter—she’s been the one taking care of her grandmother and thus has a claim over that which she has called her home for years, but “fair” doesn’t factor where tradition is concerned. Her uncle (the eldest) allows Tsidi’s cousins to put her in her place as new construction plans made while the recently departed was still alive become colored as some sort of hostile takeover. And then he joins the chorus by telling her what she did means nothing. He decides who gets the house. Tsidi subsequently packs her things, steals her grandmother’s coat, and leaves with her daughter Winnie (Kamvalethu Jonas Raziya).

Where’s she to go, though? She and Winnie’s father (Khanyiso Kenqa’s Luthando) are no longer together,...

Fox Fire Films, Sanusi Chronicles, Causeway Films produced.

Visit Films will kick off world sales later this week on South African filmmaker Jenna Cato Bass’s TIFF genre title Good Madam (Mlungu Wam) which gets its world premiere in Platform on Thursday (September 9).

Set in the suburbs of Cape Town Good Madam tells of Tsidi, a single parent who moves back in with her estranged mother Mavis, a live-in domestic worker who has been employed by her bedridden white “Madam” for 30 years.

When Tsidi experiences disturbing events that have plagued her mother she uncovers the dark truth behind the relationship Mavis has with her employer.

Stars: Joey King, Jacob Elordi, Joel Courtney, Carson White, Hilton Pelser, Judd Krok, Sanda Shandu, Joshua Daniel Eady, D. David Morin, Bianca Bosch, Jessica Sutton, Molly Ringwald | Written and Directed by Vince Marcello

When Elle Evans (Joey King), a pretty, late-bloomer who’s never-been-kissed, decides to run a kissing booth at her high school’s Spring Carnival, she unexpectedly finds herself locking lips with her secret crush- the ultimate bad boy, Noah Flynn (Jacob Elordi). Sparks fly, but there’s one little problem: Noah just happens to be the brother of her best friend, Lee, (Joel Courtney) and is absolutely off limits according to the rules of their friendship pact. Elle’s life is turned upside down when she realizes that she must ultimately make a choice: follow the rules or follow her heart.

The Netflix exclusive The Kissing Booth directed by Vince Marcello and starring Joey King has suffered...