The Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF) returns to Toronto this fall with an exciting new lineup of films, panel conversations, and design-forward experiences at the TIFF Lightbox from November 12-15, 2025. Presented by
Eventscape, this year’s program features 14 international films that explore how design shapes our cities, our values, and our future. ADFF: Toronto 2025 opens with the Canadian premiere of Identity: A Czech Graphic Design Love Story —a playful and poignant exploration of national identity told through the lens of graphic design. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film’s narrator, Nicholas D. Lowry, President and Principal Auctioneer of Swann Auction Galleries and beloved Antiques Roadshow appraiser.
In addition to the opening night feature, this year’s selection offers a compelling mix of stories that span continents and design disciplines:
- Miralles (Spain) – A lyrical, non-linear exploration of Enric Miralles, the Catalan master architect, gone too soon.
- Kensington Market: Heart of the City (Canada) – Through the eyes of the neighbourhood’s vibrant personalities, the film reveals a community fighting not just for affordability, but for the soul of the place they have helped define.
- Changing Lanes (USA) – After a hit-and-run death in Brooklyn, a grassroots campaign fights to convert a deadly road into a safer one with protected bike lanes.
- Building on the Edge (USA) – Architecture students design and deliver buildings for Antarctica, confronting extreme environments with idealism and grit.
- Prickly Mountain and My Design Build Life (USA) – A joyful homage to Vermont’s experimental design-build community, told from within.
- The Space Architect (USA) – A moving tribute to NASA architect Constance Adams, whose life’s work bridged planetary design and climate hope.
- Tracing Light (Germany) – A poetic meditation on light as both a scientific mystery and the essence of architecture.
- At the Garden’s Pace (Netherlands) – A slow-build documentary set in a conifer garden where bold architecture grows gently into its landscape.
- Living in a Piece of Furniture (Netherlands) – An intimate look at Gerrit Rietveld’s radical homes and the influence of his lesser-known muse and creative partner, Truus Schröder.
- Lewerentz Divine Darkness (Sweden) – A poetic excavation of Sigurd Lewerentz’s haunting Scandinavian architecture.
- We The Others (Italy/Brazil) – A portrait of Estudio Campana, whose design work fuses craft, sustainability, and the vibrancy of Brazilian culture.
- Søren Pihlmann: Make Materials Matter (Denmark) follows Danish architect Søren Pihlmann as he reimagines architecture through material reuse, offering a poetic, practical response to the global construction industry’s waste and carbon footprint.
Several films will be followed by panel discussions, co-presented with the Toronto Society of Architects, featuring filmmakers, architects, designers, urbanists, and critics in conversation about the ideas and issues raised onscreen.
