Alliance for the Future, unveiled at Montreal summit and open to other countries, conceived for world ‘shaken by new storms’

Canada and Europe have announced a new alliance of like-minded nations to serve as both a “protective canopy under which our citizens can thrive” and a powerful hedge against the unpredictable nature of geopolitics, while welcoming other countries to join.

Speaking to reporters on Friday from Montreal, the prime minister, Mark Carney, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, called the new partnership the Alliance for the Future and said the “deepest possible partnership between Canada and the 27-member bloc had the potential to offer unprecedented stability and opportunity”.

Watered-down version of statement to be issued at end of Montreal summit instead offers ‘ever closer association’

The EU has backed away from its offer to Canada to start talks on becoming an “associate member” after disagreements between member states just as an EU-Canada summit was set to begin in Montreal.

A draft of a joint statement to be issued after the end of the summit, which runs Thursday and Friday, showed a watered-down version offering “an ever closer association of Canada to the EU, short of full membership itself”.

Tightly fought election saw record turnout as incumbent mayor ran against her rival Brad Bradford

The mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow, promised more rental housing, free school lunches and reduce fares for frequent transit riders after she was elected to a decisive second term as mayor in a wave of support for progressive councillors.

The tightly fought election saw record turnout but Chow ultimately turned in a dominant 13-percentage-point win over her rival, Brad Bradford, receiving 54% of the vote compared with his 41%. Many had been expecting a far closer race, given weeks of polling that suggested a dead heat between the pair who presented differing visions for Canada’s largest city.

Result is a victory for prime minister Mark Carney and supporters of Canadian unity

Voters in Canada’s Alberta have overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to begin the process of independence, delivering a decisive victory for supporters of Canadian unity and deepening divisions within the separatist movement.

With nearly 1.9m votes counted, roughly 76% people supported remaining in Canada, while 24% backed beginning a process toward separation, according to unofficial results from Elections Alberta.

Prime minister Mark Carney describes blaze as ‘one of the worst tragedies for the forces on Canadian soil in peacetime’

Four people have been killed and dozens more seriously injured after a “violent, fast-moving” fire tore through one of Canada’s busiest military training bases in Alberta, the country’s prime minister said on Sunday.

Mark Carney called the incident “one of the worst tragedies for the forces on Canadian soil in peacetime”.

The pioneering computer scientist on why Trump is using ‘superintelligence’ wrong, whether AI could wipe out humanity – and how our biggest challenge will be accepting we’re not the only intelligent beings

Donald Trump is a “corrupt, senile felon” whose fixation on the term superintelligence proves he knows nothing about AI, said Geoffrey Hinton, “godfather” of the technology, in a wide-ranging interview where he doubled down on recent warnings that AI models pose an existential threat to humanity and scoffed at claims the industry could regulate itself.

The pioneering computer scientist, whose work helped lay the foundations of modern AI, has since become one of the technology’s most vocal critics. His latest remarks come after a tumultuous month during which a growing list of senior AI scientists and researchers have joined Hinton in ringing the alarm about how the technology he helped create could ultimately escape human control, sparking an industry crisis, the hasty assembly of congressional meetings and a rare global consensus that something must be done.

The incident is the latest to raise questions about the growing reliance on digital maps for wilderness navigation

The route up the Widowmaker Arete, a 1,700-foot wall in British Columbia, is deceptively described as “mostly easy slab climbing”, interspersed with “short steep sections that can include finger cracks, blocky face climbing”. It requires careful planning, and the right equipment.

When 16-year-old Bryce Vincent Gowryluk found himself facing its sheer headwall last week, he had neither. He did, however, ask the AI chatbot Claude for directions.

Most prestigious literature prize goes to Canadian known for genre-crossing works such as Autobiography of Red

• ‘Delights await!’: Margaret Atwood and other writers on Nobel winner Anne Carson

• Where to start with: Anne Carson

The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to the Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson, the Swedish Academy has announced.

The academy cited the author’s “bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature”.

Toronto film festival: Director Guy Nattiv draws on personal experience for an 80s-set tale of a woman abandoning her family for a creepy commune

We remain fascinated and horrified by the hows and whys of cult narratives, how someone could be so seduced by something so unknown and why they would then risk everything for it. Oscar-winning writer-director Guy Nattiv has been personally affected by these questions for most of his life, his grandmother joining a cult when he was a child and never coming back.

His attempt to try to understand who she was and why she acted in such a way has led to unsettling drama The Liberation, a fictionalised tale that acts as a form of therapy for him and a mostly successful antidote to more sensationalist cult stories for us. Enough Netflix docuseries and schlocky horror movies have given us a more extreme and often violent idea of how cults infect and destroy vulnerable people but Nattiv opts for a more thoughtful slow-burn. He’s recruited a suitably thoughtful actor in Carrie Coon, no stranger to this particular psychology having broken out in The Leftovers, one of the more intelligent cult dramas in recent years.

The Liberation is screening at the Toronto film festival and will be released later this year

Commission president says EU must ‘urgently reimagine our partnerships’ as she makes unprecedented offer

Canada has been invited to become the first “associate member” of the EU by the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.

In an unprecedented offer, von der Leyen said on Wednesday that the EU and Canada “see the world with the same eyes” through shared democratic values and common approaches to many big issues, from AI to climate breakdown, the Ukraine war and geopolitics.

Toronto film festival: A fictionalised version of the cantankerous crime author plots a murder with an ambitious editor in a story in need of a sharper edge

The restrictions of Covid led to an inevitable rise in safely contained chamber-piece movies, where a handful of characters find themselves in a usually remote house, dialogue taking obvious precedence over action. There were some highlights, such Kevin Williamson’s timely slasher Sick, and some considerable low points, such as Sam Levinson’s vapid drama Malcolm & Marie, but while we had plenty of them, none of them rivalled some of the greatest and smartest pre-pandemic examples. The very best tended to be based on plays and quite often starred Michael Caine.

He was in Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth, which went from Tony to Oscar success back in the 1970s, and then the arguably even better Deathtrap in the decade after, which Sidney Lumet adapted from Ira Levin’s deviously plotted play. In between there was also an under-seen TV movie called One of My Wives Is Missing, based on 60s play Trap for a Single Man, which was notably lesser but still delivered a similarly specific brand of twisty, talky thrills. There would be secrets, surprises, reversals and usually at least one dead body by the end of it, a subgenre entirely indebted to the work of Agatha Christie (who reportedly loved Sleuth on stage so much that she dedicated a picture of herself to be hung in the house used in the big screen adaptation). The bar is therefore held rather high, a puzzle that requires an ingenious level of writing that needs to be smart without smug and shocking without feeling cheap.

Prime minister speaks of strengthening Canada’s economic and political ties to Europe at Canada Investment Summit

Mark Carney said Canada will pursue a “unique security and economic alliance” with Europe as he positions his country as a base to build in the “new global economic order”.

Speaking to investors, company executives and government ministers at the inaugural Canada Investment Summit on Tuesday, the prime minister pitched Canada as a “safe harbour” and lucrative home for foreign capital as his government looks to reduce its reliance on trade with the United States.

Toronto film festival: riotous lead performance holds together third movie from actor turned film-maker, about a housewife who joins a local musical

Jesse Eisenberg’s last two directorial efforts – the prickly comedy When You Finish Saving the World and the slightly softer A Real Pain – are small films rooted in the real world. They have their little idiosyncrasies, their bits of cinematic flair, but they keep their feet grounded in the here and now. For his third film, Eisenberg has said goodbye to all that (or most of that) and run headlong at the surreal and the absurd, borrowing from Charlie Kaufman and other oddballs to tell a small story in a big way.

The Debut is about a repressed housewife, Mona (Julianne Moore), who decides to audition for a role in a community theater production of a musical called Nosy Neighbors, one of those gassy Manhattan trifles that were so ubiquitous on Broadway a half century ago. Mona’s kids are about to fly the nest, and her husband barely seems to notice her when she’s standing right next to him. So why not have a little creative adventure?

Toronto film festival: Saipan standout Éanna Hardwicke is a soulful gay man looking for a missing friend in a striking yet muddled debut

It’s not normal to regularly contemplate mortality in your twenties, to ask questions about where we might go after we die and whether any part of our legacy will even matter in the years following. But for gay men in the 1980s, death was everywhere.

In David Turpin’s intermittently impactful debut Ancestors, the director tries to make a connection with those men who lived through the very worst years of the Aids crisis. Turpin, born in 1982, might not have the first-hand experience but he bears the scars passed on from generation to generation and like many young gay men coming of age in the years after, likely experienced a watered down version of the shame and fear those before him once felt.

Toronto film festival: To be a parent or not to be a parent is the question propelling this often insightful yet largely run-of-the-mill riff on a Judd Apatow movie

It’s a question still casually and routinely asked to couples everywhere regardless of familiarity, one that many fear and some feel actively offended by: are you guys gonna have kids?

Despite living in an age where we’re supposedly more accepting of people who make choices that don’t conform to whatever dusty old standards our parents and their parents had to live by, there’s still an odd regressive judgment attached to those who dare to say no or even maybe. There’s the sad tilt of the head and maybe a “but you’d make such great parents” on top, as if either would make a difference to one of life’s biggest decisions. It’s a question that writer-director Lauren Miller Rogen knows all too well and as the wife of Seth Rogen, it’s one that has an answer that immediately becomes a headline.

Toronto film festival: Shakespeare in Love director John Madden’s feelgood – and bad – comedy-drama is powered by excellent performances and authenticity

So far at this year’s Toronto film festival, I have seen three films involving someone with dementia and two featuring someone who has Aids. It’s not just a sign that the lineup could perhaps benefit from some more light relief but also that certain conditions and illnesses still tend to be covered more often than others on screen.

Last year’s festival saw Scottish hit I Swear bring an unprecedented level of awareness to people who live with Tourette’s and while there’s perhaps less of an obvious edge to John Madden’s more politely framed comedy-drama Onwards and Sideways, it too acts as both narrative movie and potential educational tool. Our knowledge of Parkinson’s is usually restricted to the celebrities who have it, from Muhammad Ali to Michael J Fox to, most recently, Carly Simon, but for many of us, it’s still seen in an abstract way, a handful of symptoms we know about, but so many more that we don’t.

Toronto film festival: the actor gives one of her best performances to date in a smoothly made globe-trotting drama of a woman’s life after the loss of her husband

There’s a jump scare about 30 minutes into the glossy romantic drama Love of Your Life that’s about as effective as anything you’ll see in a horror movie this year.

The film is focused on the life and loves of Maya (Margaret Qualley), a twentysomething Boston nurse who meet-cutes with the nerdy and idiosyncratic Felix (Gabriel Basso) during the purchase of a nightstand. We follow the initial giddy rush of their courting as they progress all the way to an impromptu wedding over the course of a few years, marked by Maya’s change in age announced in text. But just as we’re about to process the unsettling introduction of Felix using Chekhov’s inhaler, a news report interrupts the sunny tone. Spoiler: it’s March 2020.

Toronto film festival: There’s a knockout central performance from Anthony Ippolito in this otherwise rather lightweight making-of comedy drama

We first see Anthony Ippolito sauntering into a harsh spotlight in I Play Rocky’s opening frames. He’s squirrelling around an audition space, physicalizing the battle between his nerves and the stubborn self-confidence that gets him into those rooms, knowing casting agents typically count him out. He collects his wits, puts his chest out to perform as “Thug #2”, and bellows out the lines, in that deep slow growl as though he’s speaking while chewing through a New York striploin. We don’t find out if his character got the “Thug #2” gig, but in those opening moments, Ippolito nails his part as Sylvester Stallone.

Ippolito is a casting coup for I Play Rocky, Peter Farrelly’s lightweight comedy about the making of Rocky, which leans hard on easy nostalgia for the 50-year-old Oscar-winning crowd-pleaser. His looks, physicality and performance are so on point and uncanny that I never broke away from seeing Stallone, not even when he’s recreating scenes so firmly lodged in mine and pop culture’s memory. The movie’s title says more than it lets on, because Ippolito doesn’t just play Sylvester Stallone playing Rocky Balboa. His performance, perhaps intentionally, blurs the line between Stallone and Rocky. When Ippolito’s Stallone is flirting with his soon to be wife Sasha (AnnaSophia Robb, soulful) or sitting in an office sparring with producers Irwin Winkler (PJ Byrne) and Robert Chartoff (Toby Kebbell), trying to convince them he’s worthy of a shot, I saw Rocky.

Toronto film festival: a city-dwelling gay guy has to go home to rural Missouri after his father dies in this Sundance-by-numbers comedy drama that has its moments

It might be premiering at Toronto 2026 but we’re very much back at Sundance in the late 2000s/early 2010s with Trash Mountain, an indie-by-numbers not without its charms.

It’s the story of a city-living twentysomething who has to travel back to his rural hometown after the death of his father and contains a lot of what that logline would suggest. Awkwardly bumping into an old schoolmate in the dollar store – check. Brief romance with a charming local – check. Wacky grandmother played by an esteemed character actor – check. Scene of a stuffy local shocked at lead character’s bracing humour – check. Scene of a wise local giving lead character salient and miraculously well-timed advice – check. It’s not as if these elements haven’t worked well before and it’s not as if some of them don’t work well here (especially when compared to a recent heinous example), it’s just often harder to stomach such obvious formula in a film that is positioned as something so personal made somewhat outside of the system (despite boasting Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow and Lilly Wachowski, who was originally set to direct, as producers, it was made in 18 days on a shoestring budget).

Trash Mountain is premiering at the Toronto film festival and is seeking distribution

Toronto film festival: the two-time Oscar-winner is an unusual killer in a compelling mix of pulpy action and family drama

Latif, the solemn hitman played soulfully by Mahershala Ali, carries diapers in his kill kit. I can’t tell if that’s because they come in handy when soaking up pools of blood on the fly; or because at a moment’s notice the hitman has to switch over from his brutal occupation to daddy duties. Or perhaps it’s both for this contract killer who comes armed with a blade and baby wipes, who takes lives and nurtures them, whose life is composed of jarring and poetic contradictions, much like the movie he’s in.

Those contradictions are on full striking display in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’s opening moments, an explosive close-quarters brawl in a restroom, after which Latif uses the baby wipes to clean up the mess he made with that blade. It’s a lovely image, in a film filled with so many, cutting right through the tension within this character. It also feels like a wink to the audience from Ali and writer/director Bassam Tariq, a way for them to acknowledge right off the top the distracting mess made by that other Blade.