Deen

TORONTO — Welcome to a special daily edition of the Envelope at TIFF, a newsletter collecting the latest developments out of Canada’s annual film showcase. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

Have you seen the images from our photo gallery? Staff photographer Christina House and her crew are truly capturing the best of the fest.

There are wonderful shots up now, including Elle Fanning, Ethan Hawke, Channing Tatum and more, but this link will be updated periodically with others.

Expect Cillian Murphy, the cast of Rian Johnson’s ‘Wake Up Dead Man,’ Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Cillian Murphy and more surprises!

The day’s buzziest premieres

‘Good Fortune’

Aziz Ansari, left, and Keanu Reeves in the movie “Good Fortune.”

(Eddy Chen/Lionsgate/Eddy Chen / Lionsgate)

A low-level guardian angel righting a wrong feels like the set-up to a classic comedy. But amid a premise motivated by income inequality, there’s a distinctly current edge to “Good Fortune,” the debut feature of writer-director-star Aziz Ansari.

A struggling film editor who makes ends meet as a food delivery driver, Arj (Ansari) is at the end of his rope when said angel Gabriel (Keanu Reeves) switches his life with Jeff (Seth Rogen), a wealthy, self-important tech investor.

Except, instead of realizing things are tough all over, Arj decides he likes Jeff’s life better and doesn’t want to switch back. Which is only the beginning of the complications for these three lost souls.

Looking for hope in an out-of-balance world while laced with a righteously indignant anger (and set against distinctly L.A. locations), “Good Fortune” is social satire with a big heart. — Mark Olsen

‘Canceled: The Paula Deen Story’

Paula Deen in the documentary “Canceled: The Paula Deen Story.”

(TIFF)

Hungry for a brisk, witty documentary that’s as easy to enjoy as a plate of hot biscuits? Filmmaker Billy Corben analyzes the tabloid feeding frenzy that chewed up celebrity TV chef Paula Deen when she admitted to using a racial slur.

Going in, I only knew two things about Deen: the 2013 scandal and her staunch devotion to butter. Her full story is fascinating, especially buttressed by contemporary interviews with Deen and her two sons, Bobby and Jamie, who all specialize in Southern-fried zingers: “It came on like a snowball full of chainsaws,” says Jamie of the media blitz.

A complex schematic of the cancelation machine, “Canceled” argues that Deen was punished double that summer because Trayvon Martin’s killer wasn’t punished at all. The great archival footage makes you get why audiences once loved Deen — and it’s evident how much her family and friends still do, even if Corben greases her mea culpa to the point that you feel a little queasy. — Amy Nicholson

‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’

Josh O’Connor, left, and Daniel Craig in Rian Johnson’s movie “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” having its world premiere as part of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

(Netflix)

One of the real pleasures of the witty, surprising films made by writer-director Rian Johnson starring Daniel Craig as Southern gentleman detective Benoit Blanc is that, within the confines of the murder mystery, they could take place just about anywhere: a patriarch’s creaky mansion, a billionaire’s private island and now a small town’s historic church.

Or at least that’s the best we know from the scant details made public about the new “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” ahead of its TIFF world premiere tonight. Craig returns as Blanc but joining the cast this time are Josh O’Connor, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, Jeremy Renner, Daryl McCormack, Cailee Spaeny, Thomas Haden Church, Andrew Scott and Glenn Close.

The festival has been a good luck charm so far, with the previous two “Knives Out” movies premiering at TIFF in the same theater, day and time slot and both going on to Oscar nominations for their screenplays. — Mark Olsen

They couldn’t stop talking, even before the cameras for ‘Poetic License’ were rolling

Andrew Barth Feldman, left, Cooper Hoffman and Leslie Mann in “Poetic License,” having its world premiere as part of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

(TIFF)

Mark Olsen has a fun interview with the banter-ific Andrew Barth Feldman and Cooper Hoffman, costars of Maude Apatow’s new movie “Poetic Licence.” They were friends before they shot the film and their verbal mutual affection — honed to a crazy degree of anticipation — is something to behold. They’ve raised bromance to an art form.

His apocalyptic art film ‘Sirât’ dances in the face of oblivion. That’s why people love it

Director Oliver Laxe, photographed in the Los Angeles Times Studios at RBC House during the Toronto International Film Festival.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Director Oliver Laxe has made a truly unique art film about a restless group of ravers who drive out in the the desert on the eve of what could be the end of the world. Since its debut at Cannes, “Sirât” is acquiring superfans — critics and audiences alike — wherever it plays. On the occasion of his first TIFF screening, Laxe spoke to me about his commitment to risk.

In the late 1990s, Paula Deen was an independent restaurateur whose family-operated restaurant had just received a glowing review from USA Today. Her life and career were permanently changed.

Now, over 25 years later, the Georgia native has announced the closing of the Lady and Sons — the iconic restaurant that made her a star of Southern cuisine and a household name in the cooking world.

Opened in downtown Savannah, Ga., in 1996, the Lady and Sons boasted a menu of local classics like fried green tomatoes, banana pudding and hoecakes. The signature dish, Southern fried chicken, was enough to draw lines wrapping around the block — and the restaurant came to be viewed as an embodiment of the indulgent and buttery flavors that characterize Southern cooking.

“There in Savannah, Paula Deen’s homestyle Southern menu at the Lady and Sons turned me into a ravenous beast, unmindful of manners, cholesterol, North-South diplomacy and the dropped jaws of my companions,” USA Today, then the nation’s most-read daily newspaper, wrote on Dec. 17, 1999.

Earlier that year, the popularity of the Lady and Sons caught the attention of Food Network journalist Gordon Elliott. Deen appeared on Elliott’s short-lived show “Door Knock Dinners” that led to her own Daytime Emmy-winning Food Network program, “Paula’s Home Cooking.”

On her website and social media accounts, Deen bid farewell to the Lady and Sons and its longtime fans. Also closing is her newer restaurant, the Chicken Box, which opened in 2023.

“Hey, y’all, my sons and I made the heartfelt decision that Thursday, July 31st, was the last day of service for The Lady & Sons and The Chicken Box,” Deen said in the statement. “We will now focus our attention on the four Paula Deen’s Family Kitchen locations across the country.”

The announcement came without warning, especially as the restaurant continued to draw tours and lines of customers. Three weeks prior to the announcement, the Lady and Sons posted on Instagram that it was hiring for all positions.

Over the years, some of Deen’s other restaurants have also closed suddenly. In 2014, employees at Uncle Bubba’s Seafood and Oyster House — a Savannah eatery she co-owned with her brother, Earl W. “Bubba” Hiers Jr. — reportedly arrived to work to find the doors locked and the appliances removed. A sign on the door said, “Thank you for 10 great years. Uncle Bubba’s is now closed.”

The Panama City, Fla., location of Paula Deen’s Family Kitchen also closed abruptly in 2019, laying off 30 employees without advance notice. Several former employees told local news channel WJHG that they were left without their main source of income following the closure.

Uncle Bubba’s closure came a year after controversy began to surround Deen after a former manager at the restaurant sued Hiers, alleging sexual and racial discrimination.

Food Network canceled “Paula’s Home Cooking” after Deen admitted to using a racial slur during a deposition for the 2013 lawsuit. Lawyers asked Deen if she had ever used the N-word, to which Deen replied, “Yes, of course,” later adding, “It’s been a very long time.”

Since then, the 78-year-old has focused on her restaurants.

The Lady and Sons, as her core establishment, was the result of a litany of personal struggles and ambition. Both of her parents passed away when she was in her early 20s and Deen, then a young mother, struggled with depression and agoraphobia, or fear of going outside.

With only $200 left, Deen founded a catering company out of her kitchen called the Bag Lady. Her handmade bag lunches were delivered by her sons Jamie and Bobby and earned Deen a local reputation for her homestyle cooking. After one attempt at a restaurant, the Lady in 1991, the follow-up, the Lady and Sons, co-owned with Jamie and Bobby, would be her success.

NEW YORK — On a recent afternoon, Mahmoud Khalil sat in his Manhattan apartment, cradling his 10-week-old son as he thought back to the pre-dawn hours spent pacing a frigid immigration jail in Louisiana, awaiting news of the child’s birth in New York.

For a moment, the outspoken Palestinian activist found himself uncharacteristically speechless.

“I cannot describe the pain of that night,” Khalil said finally, gazing down as the baby, Deen, cooed in his arms. “This is something I will never forgive.”

Now, weeks after regaining his freedom, Khalil is seeking restitution. On Thursday, his lawyers filed a claim for $20 million in damages against the Trump administration, alleging Khalil was falsely imprisoned, maliciously prosecuted and smeared as an antisemite as the government sought to deport him over his prominent role in campus protests.

The filing — a precursor to a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act — names the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the State Department.

It comes as the deportation case against Khalil, a 30-year-old recent graduate student at Columbia University, continues to wind its way through the immigration court system.

The goal, Khalil said, is to send a message that he won’t be intimidated into silence.

“They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable,” Khalil said. “Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”

Khalil plans to share any settlement money with others targeted in Trump’s “failed” effort to suppress pro-Palestinian speech. In lieu of a settlement, he said he would also accept an official apology and changes to the administration’s deportation policies.

In an emailed statement, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, called Khalil’s claim “absurd,” accusing him of “hateful behavior and rhetoric” that threatened Jewish students.

A State Department spokesperson said its actions toward Khalil were fully supported by the law. Inquiries to the White House and ICE were not immediately returned.

Harsh conditions and an ‘absurd’ allegation

The filing accuses President Trump and other officials of mounting a haphazard and illegal campaign to “terrorize him and his family,” beginning with Khalil’s March 8 arrest.

On that night, he said he was returning home from dinner with his wife, Noor Abdalla, when he was “effectively kidnapped” by plainclothes federal agents, who refused to provide a warrant and appeared surprised to learn he was a legal U.S. permanent resident.

He was then whisked overnight to an immigration jail in Jena, La., a remote location that was “deliberately concealed” from his family and attorneys, according to the filing.

Inside, Khalil said he was denied his ulcer medication, forced to sleep under harsh fluorescent lights and fed “nearly inedible” food, causing him to lose 15 pounds. “I cannot remember a night when I didn’t go to sleep hungry,” Khalil recalled.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration publicly celebrated the arrest, promising to deport him and others whose protests against Israel it dubbed “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”

Khalil, who has condemned antisemitism before and since his arrest, was not accused of a crime and has not been linked to Hamas or any other terrorist group. “At some point, it becomes like reality TV,” Khalil said of the allegations. “It’s very absurd.”

Deported for beliefs

A few weeks into his incarceration, Khalil was awoken by a fellow detainee, who pointed excitedly to his face on a jailhouse TV screen. A new memo signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged Khalil hadn’t broken the law, but argued he should be deported for beliefs that could undermine U.S. foreign policy interests.

“My beliefs are not wanting my tax money or tuition going toward investments in weapons manufacturers for a genocide,” Khalil said. “It’s as simple as that.”

By then, Khalil had become something of a celebrity in the 1,200-person lock-up. When not dealing with his own case, he hosted “office hours” for fellow immigrant detainees, leaning on his past experience working at a British embassy in Beirut to help others organize paperwork and find translators for their cases.

“I’m pretty good at bureaucracy,” Khalil said.

At night, they played Russian and Mexican card games, as Khalil listened to “one story after another from people who didn’t understand what’s happening to them.”

“This was one of the most heartbreaking moments,” he said. “People on the inside don’t know if they have any rights.”

Lost time

On June 20, after 104 days in custody, Khalil was ordered released by a federal judge, who found the government’s efforts to remove him on foreign policy grounds were likely unconstitutional.

He now faces new allegations of misrepresenting personal details on his green card application. In a motion filed late Wednesday, attorneys for Khalil described those charges as baseless and retaliatory, urging a judge to dismiss them.

The weeks since his release, Khalil said, have brought moments of bliss and intense personal anguish.

Fearing harassment or possible arrest, he leaves the house less frequently, avoiding large crowds or late-night walks. But he lit up as he remembered watching Deen taking his first swim earlier in the week. “It was not very pleasant for him,” Khalil said, smiling.

“I’m trying as much as possible to make up for the time with my son and my wife,” he added. “As well thinking about my future and trying to comprehend this new reality.”

Part of that reality, he said, will be continuing his efforts to advocate against Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. On the day after his arrest, he led a march through Manhattan, draped in a Palestinian flag — and flanked by security.

As he poured Deen’s milk into a bottle, Khalil considered whether he might’ve done anything differently had he known the personal cost of his activism.

“We could’ve communicated better. We could’ve built more bridges with more people,” he said. “But the core thing of opposing a genocide, I don’t think you can do that any differently. This is your moral imperative when you’re watching your people be slaughtered by the minute.”

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.