The best experience you can have at the Toronto International Film Festival is to rise out of your jaded “I’ve seen it all before” mentality and become totally delighted by a film and filmmaker whom you know nothing about.

In 2000, Danish director Lone Scherfig was one of those with Italian for Beginners. In 2007 Roy Andersson’s You the Living was another, his series of vignettes about the greatness and baseness of humankind had a pay-off that leaves one reeling. Andersson’s most recent film, the whimsically named A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, is one of the best films you can see this year. As Robbie Collin from the Telegraph wrote, “you have to grab a net and try and coax your soul back down from the ceiling.” It’s not often you feel that about a film. Playing at Cinecenta and The Vic Theatre in August.