#TIFF26: “ALL OF A SUDDEN” REVIEW

By Nicholas Porteous

Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira), a French nursing home director struggling to implement a new system of care for her patients, serendipitously finds her way into an experimental theatre performance written and directed by Mari (Tao Okamoto), a Japanese playwright with stage four cancer. They forge a one-of-a-kind connection built on their unique backgrounds and personal struggles. This is Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden, a cinematic experience that defies easy classification–building its thesis slowly and steadily over 196 minutes to a stirring and full-hearted crescendo of humanity.

All of a Sudden is at its best when Marie-Lou and Mari are finding their soulful connection in real time, before our eyes. Efira and Okamoto are magnetic screen presences because of their transcendent affinity for one another–to the point that I lost track of All of a Sudden‘s immense runtime. The film is equal parts concerned with the intellectual and unspoken ways we can better care for each other, individually and as a collective–blurring the line between our interior and exterior worlds. When the movie intermittently widens its scope beyond our two leads and becomes more about the ensemble of the nursing home and the organizational processes that must be shifted to better serve its residents, its slow pace becomes more apparent. Sometimes All of a Sudden feels less like a drama and more like an empathic manifesto. It makes for a beautiful statement, but not always a conventionally satisfying production. If you’re not familiar with Hamaguchi’s languid style, you should know going in: he’s leaving you a lot of room to contemplate the movie’s meaning on your own, as he fades from one movement to the next.

If you like your narratives slow and your catharsis earned, All of a Sudden offers a deeply rewarding look into the lives of two unlikely kindred spirits, and a glance at the kind of society we might foster with real understanding and passion for the needs of those around us. It’s a much needed, healing vision here in 2026.

All of a Sudden screens at TIFF ’26:

Mon. Sept 14 at 12:30 PM at TIFF Lightbox

Sat. Sept 19 at 2:15 PM at Scotiabank Theatre Toronto