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

At 22, Ramsey has already been on our screens for a decade, and nominated for every award going. So why do they find it strange to be called an actor?

Bella Ramsey often feels more comfortable around older people. The actor, 22, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, has been working professionally since they were 11, when they got their first TV job as the child noblewoman Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones. For half of their life, they have been in adult environments, talking to adults, working with adults. Even so, the London cafe in which Ramsey has chosen to meet makes any retirement home look like a creche. It is full of old men with their dogs, popping in for a cup of tea and a morning chat.

“It feels like it belongs in the Midlands. It feels a bit, like, shit and familiar,” says Ramsey, who grew up in the East Midlands and can say that with affection. Their curly hair is short, pushed back off their face, and they have a single gold hoop in one ear. The plan had been to go for a walk this morning, but it is raining so we have a cup of tea and wait for the drizzle to pass. Ramsey seems both younger and older than 22, depending on the moment. Sometimes, within a single sentence, they sound ancient and wise, and also like a bookish teenager, discovering with amazement how they think they might feel about the world.

Second season of BBC hit has attracted one of the most high-profile casts ever assembled for a reality TV show

If it were any other show, the sight of the comedian Alan Carr sobbing under the burden of his dishonesty may have been enough to put off any celebrity thinking about accepting a place in the perilous Traitors’ castle.

Yet the second season of The Celebrity Traitors, being filmed at its now famous Highlands retreat, has managed to attract one of the most high-profile casts ever assembled for a reality TV show.

Actors Richard E Grant, Michael Sheen and Bella Ramsey among star-studded cast hoping for victory as BBC’s hit spin-off series returns to screens

Considering the Traitors is a game of murderous treachery played out in a castle, the Shakespearean actors in the cast of the new celebrity spin-off series should be well set.

Oscar-nominated Richard E Grant, acclaimed actor Michael Sheen and The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey will be among the thespians vying for victory this year, all of whom have the Bard on their CV.