The trees are watching — and something much worse may be hiding inside the house.

A strange blend of psychological horror, ecological allegory, witchcraft, and Grand Guignol madness, Trees Are Watching is heading to TIFF 2026, where the film will make its world premiere on September 18.

The latest horror film from Iranian Kurdish filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi (Half Moon, Turtles Can Fly) stars Eva Green (Penny Dreadful, Nocebo) as Darya, a writer fascinated by the spiritual connection between humans and trees.

Darya returns to her hometown of Mardin with her deaf daughter, only to find herself haunted by memories of Spin and Nihal, twin sisters she knew during childhood.

She moves back into their former family home, which now sits beside an area devastated by mass deforestation. Two ominous trees remain standing outside — each planted in memory of one of the sisters.

Then the nightmares begin.

Darya starts experiencing nightly visitations from a malignant entity that takes an unexpected form: a seemingly ordinary chair made from local timber.

As her obsession with the past grows, Darya begins revisiting her troubled relationship with the twins. Nihal had previously claimed to be terrorized by a terrifying presence in the house — a maternal witch supposedly lurking inside its noisy toilet.

Soon, Darya’s grip on reality begins to unravel.

Murat Yildirim also stars.

And if the premise wasn’t already strange enough, TIFF promises that Ghobadi’s film dives headfirst into surreal horror and outright carnage.

The festival describes Trees Are Watching as a journey through “surreal set pieces” featuring increasingly phantasmagoric imagery and full-blown Grand Guignol spectacle.

One particularly wild sequence is said to recall the death-defying mayhem of the Final Destination franchise, suggesting that this psychological nightmare won’t be afraid to get seriously bloody.

Beneath the supernatural chaos, however, Ghobadi also weaves in ecological themes and a deeply personal story, creating what TIFF calls a unique flavor of terror enriched by philosophy.

With Eva Green leading a story involving haunted memories, sinister folklore, deforestation, possessed furniture, and a possible witch hiding inside a toilet, Trees Are Watching is shaping up to be one of TIFF’s more unusual horror offerings.

Trees Are Watching makes its world premiere at TIFF on September 18.

Stay tuned for more from GoreCulture when our TIFF 2026 coverage begins.