ADFF, the Architecture & Design Film Festival, returns to TIFF Lightbox next week, November 12-15, 2025. It begins on Wednesday evening, continues on Thursday and Friday evenings and runs all day on Saturday, with a total of sixteen performances and a special event, the Big Brutal Quiz!
The grand opening on Wednesday will take place in the spacious Cinema 2; Identity: A Czech graphic design love story in which we are welcomed to the magnificent city of Prague and actually travel throughout the Czech Republic with the affable and erudite Nicholas Lowry to explore the country's design tradition and, in turn, its national identity. The evening ends with an opening party at a nearby venue.
Identity: A Czech Graphic Design Love Story, image courtesy of ADFF
The screenings on the following days will take place in cinemas 3 and 4, with two options per period.
There are four screenings on Thursday evening: Miralles, about the famous, visionary Catalan architect Enric Miralles and his work, including the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, completed after his untimely death. Søren Pihlmann: Make Materials Matter focuses on the Danish architect's mission to reduce waste as he renovates a pavilion at the Venice Biennale and breathes new life into existing materials, while Prickly Mountain and My Design/Build Life look at Warren, Vermont, where Yale-trained architects settled en masse and created a culture of design, creativity and craftsmanship. Finally, on Thursday, Kensington Market: Heart of the City is sure to generate significant interest in Toronto, showcasing our iconic neighborhood as it copes with redevelopment pressures while struggling to retain its quirky charm and independent spirit.
Kensington Market: Heart of the city, image courtesy of ADFF
The weekend begins on Friday with three more screenings and the special event. “The Space Architect” takes us into orbit, where the late architect Constance Adams imagined for NASA how humans would live beyond the reach of gravity, while “Building on the Edge” takes us almost as far: to Antarctica! Tired of their poorly designed accommodations, the scientists living at McMurdo Station enlisted the University of Colorado's Master of Architecture Design/Build course to make the site a place worth more than just a visit. “At the Garden's Pace” takes us to a much greener habitat, a botanical garden dedicated to conifers in Hilversum, Netherlands, where a modern pavilion is being built by its architects themselves.
Building on the Edge, image courtesy of ADFF
The cheeky Big Brutal Quiz rounds off Friday evening with the ADFF's first quiz show, hosted by architect and executive director of the Toronto Society of Architects, Joël León Danis. No architectural style has influenced science fiction films as much as Brutalism, which mostly aimed to unsettle audiences with massive, concrete dystopias. Is it simply misunderstood? Over 20 film clips test audiences' knowledge of iconic brutalist buildings around the world.
Saturday afternoon begins with a trip to Brazil's Parque Campana in We The Others, where the work of brothers Fernando and Humberto Campana combining community, craft and nature culminates, while Tracing Light is director Thomas Riedelsheimer's treatise on light as material and force, in which he quotes Renzo Piano: “Light is not just something that lets us see. It is a material that gives form, emotion and life to architecture.” “Changing Lines” concerns a grassroots effort by residents of Greenpoint in Brooklyn, New York to convert a fast four-lane road into a full street after a popular local teacher dies in a hit-and-run accident, providing another chance to catch Miralles. “Living in a Piece of Furniture” looks at the houses of Dutch De Stijl school architect Gerit Rietveld, while another screening of “The Space Architect” runs at the same time. Lewerentz Divine Darkness – the story of an enigmatic Swedish functionalist architect – begins the evening before the final screening, another opportunity to see opener Identity: A Czech Graphic Design Love Story.
Miralles, image courtesy of ADFF
Tickets for all films and the quiz can be purchased here. I wish you a great event!
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