TIFF50: ‘Roofman’ with Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst to World Premiere at 50th Toronto International Film Festival
Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Derek Cianfrance will return to the Toronto Film Festival this year with the world premiere of Roofman, starring Channing Tatum and Academy Award nominee Kirsten Dunst. The 50th edition of TIFF runs September 4-14, 2025.
Based on a true story, Roofman follows Jeffrey Manchester (Tatum), a former Army Ranger and struggling father who turns to robbing McDonald’s restaurants by cutting holes in their roofs, earning him the titular nickname. After escaping prison, he secretly lives inside a Toys “R” Us for six months, surviving undetected while planning his next move. But when he falls for Leigh (Dunst), a divorced mom drawn to his undeniable charm, his double life begins to unravel, setting off a compelling and suspenseful game of cat and mouse as his past closes in.
This is Cianfrance’s first feature directorial effort since 2016’s The Light Between Oceans. He was Oscar-nominated as a writer on 2019’s Sound of Metal, which also had its world premiere at TIFF. He previously directed 2010’s Blue Valentine with Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling and 2012’s The Place Beyond the Pines with Gosling, Bradley Cooper and Eva Mendes.
Academy Award nominee LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Peter Dinklage and more co-star. Paramount Pictures will release Roofman in theaters on October 10.
Roofman joins previously announced TIFF world premieres of Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers, DaCosta’s Hedda, Alejandro Amenábar’s The Captive, Sung-hyun Byun’s Good News and Chandler Levack’s Mile End Kicks.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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