The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is officially back! There are over 270 movies screening at this year’s festival of festivals—expect star-studded red carpet premieres, arthouse movies to provoke intrigue and new works from auteurs with cult followings—there’s sure to be something for everyone. Above all, TIFF’s selection is gloriously global, with movies from around the world and every continent (save Antarctica). These global perspectives are invigorating to watch on the big screen, and we at 3 are excited to take in movies that highlight ideas from every corner of the earth, illustrating how film can immerse audiences in different worlds, lifestyles, lived experiences and emotions. Below, we round up five of this year’s TIFF picks that we’re most excited for.

The Mother and the Bear

This Canadian-Chilean movie from director Johnny Ma follows Sara (played by Kim Ho-jung), a worried, doting mother who flies to snowy Winnipeg from Seoul in order to care for her daughter Sumi (played by Leere Park) after a bad fall. Once there, with Sumi in a coma, Sara discovers that she doesn’t really know anything about her daughter — or the life she leads — at all. While caring for Sumi, Sara sets out to get to know her daughter through her community in Winnipeg, as she works to learn more about the life that Sumi is excluding her from. The Mother and the Bear is a touching and funny story about family, secret lives, and being your authentic self.

Winter in Sokcho

Winter in Sokcho is a French-Korean film that follows Soo-Ha (Bella Kim), a young woman who lives in the seaside tourist town of Sokcho in South Korea. Her lonely existence is interrupted when a middle-aged French artist Yan (played Roschdy Zem) stays at the lodging house where she works. The two form a bond, traveling together on a sight-seeing journey, with each searching for something to fill a specific void: Yan is desperate for inspiration for a new piece while Soo-Ha — whose French father left her mother before her birth — is looking to understand a missing part of her identity. Winter in Sokcho is an unconventional love story about searching for identity, and the experience of transient foreign workers and tourists finding surprising connections.

Beloved Tropic

Beloved Tropic follows Ana María (played by Jenny Navarrete), a pregnant immigrant working as a caregiver, who lands a job looking after Mercedes (Paulina García), an affluent matriarch who’s suffering from early-onset dementia. Taking place in a lush garden in Panama City, Beloved Tropic is about the delicate relationship that forms between the two seemingly different women, and the tender trust they begin to build with each other.

Shook

Directed by Canadian documentarian Amar Wala, Shook follows Ashish (Saamer Usmani), a struggling author who is reckoning with his estranged father’s Parkinson’s disease diagnosis. Shook shows us all the different  — often at odds — worlds Ashish inhabits, from giving a “white” name when ordering coffee, to (white) publishers asking him to reshape his work to be more “exotic.” Wala’s fiction film debut is all about the polyglot and multicultural nature of the GTA and how those who call this place home find themselves.

A Missing Part

This film from Belgium and France and directed by Guillaume Senez, follows Jay (played by Romain Duris), a French private car driver living in Tokyo who, after a messy divorce with his ex-wife, is hoping to reunite with his daughter Lily after nine years and an unsuccessful custody battle. Just as he’s about to give up on being reunited, Lily gets into his car. The only catch? She doesn’t recognize him. A Missing Part portrays Japan’s “clean break” approach to family law—that a parent may be unable to even contact their child after divorce—and tells the story of one determined father navigating Japanese law and culture.