Toronto TIFF generic Connie Tsang

Source: Connie Tsang

Toronto International Film Festival

The stars returned to Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) after last year’s Hollywood strikes. There wasn’t much business activity, films generally played well, and protests nearly stole the headlines.

Screen looks at five of the key talking points. TIFF ends on September 15.

Stars are back

After last year’s star-light edition due to the Hollywood actors strike, the glamour returned to TIFF in 2024. And while there were no arrivals on boats at the Lido or stately processions towards the Palais in Cannes, there is something to be said for hundreds of real people lining the street outside the Princess of Wales Theatre screaming for Selena Gomez, or admirers waiting outside Fairmont Royal York Hotel to cheer Cate Blanchett, Amy Adams and Angelina Jolie at the TIFF Tribute Awards fundraiser. Elton John and Bruce Springsteen turned up for premieres of documentaries about themselves, and the atmosphere every day was festive, to say the least.

Quiet acquisitions activity

For a popular public-facing festival with a healthy number of acquisitions titles that have generally played well to the city’s enthusiastic audiences, this year’s TIFF has been slow on the deal-making front. That is not to say deals won’t happen in the weeks ahead, but the relatively sparse activity illustrated the depths of caution plaguing US buyers these days. A24 nabbed Brady Corbet’s Venice premiere The Brutalist, which received its North American premiere in Toronto. A few days later, Hulu swooped on David Gordon Green’s TIFF opening night film Nutcrackers in a reportedly eight-figure deal. Prime Video snapped up international rights to The Assessment. Beyond that, nothing yet. There has been interest in Mike Flanagan’s (non-horror) Stephen King adaptation The Life Of Chuck, and it is hard to imagine the likes of The Friend starring Naomi Watts, The Last Showgirl featuring an acclaimed performance by Pamela Anderson, and Midnight Madness selection Friendship with Paul Rudd will not find homes. Eventually.

TIFF’s role as awards season launchpad

With a multitude of stars in attendance, TIFF showed what it does so well in awards season. While it is hard to name a world premiere from Toronto that entered the awards conversation besides Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, which earned rave reviews for Marianne Jean-Baptiste, almost all the contenders that had the industry buzzing played TIFF.

Daniel Craig starrer Queer (Venice), Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (Venice), Edward Berger’s Conclave (Telluride), Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door (Venice), and Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez (Cannes) all screened somewhere else first, but they came to Toronto. The public reaction to these films counts. The TIFF People’s Choice Award is a reliable barometer of a best picture Oscar nomination at the very least. Meanwhile Focus features took note of the response to Conclave (which played well in Telluride too) to the extent that it moved up the US release by one week to October 25 and has scrapped plans for a platform launch and will now go out wide. 

Protests

The decision to cancel three weekend screenings of Anastasia Trofimova’s documentary Russians At War added a sombre note to proceedings. The film, in which Trofimova, a Russian-Canadian, embedded herself with Russian troops at the front line as they reflect on mortality, the war, and their part in it, premiered in Venice and was always going to be a hot potato.

By the time Russians At War arrived for its North American premiere in Toronto, where there is a significant Ukrainian community, things heated up. Ukrainian-Canadian protesters outside Tuesday’s (September 10) press and industry screening at Scotiabank branded Trofimova’s first-person feature Russian propaganda, and the film was denounced by Canada’s deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland and Ukrainian diplomats in Canada. The broadcaster TVOntario, which received money to support Russians At War from Canada Media Fund, publicly declared it would not air the film.

Trofimova denied her documentary was Russian propaganda, said she shot it without permission from the Russian authorities, and condemned the invasion of Ukraine an illegal act. TIFF agreed Trofimova’s film was not propaganda and on Wednesday said it was proceeding with screenings on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. One day later the festival said it had been forced to “pause” the shows “as we have been made aware of significant threats to festival operations and public safety” and was acting “in order to ensure the safety of all festival guests, staff, and volunteers”. TIFF’s move was unprecedented. Its hand was forced, and as a cultural institution championing artists’ rights and standing opposed to censorship, one can only hope this is a one-off.

*After this article was published, TIFF announced, on Sunday September 15, that it had programmed two screenings of Russians At War on Tuesday.

Content market

TIFF is going full-steam ahead with plans for the 2026 launch of its Content Market backed by a three-year C$23m ($16.9m) investment from the Canadian federal government and it was a major talking point among industry attendees. The festival has increasingly served as a venue for acquisitions and (mostly) soft launches of packages that sellers would then push hard at the American Film Market (AFM). Now the plan is to make TIFF a must-attend business trip encompassing rights trading, a co-production market, and a technology focus. The big questions are, what does this mean for AFM, which is reeling somewhat after a challenging few years, and when would be the best time for a TIFF market. Many US sellers said they would like to see TIFF pushed back by a week or two, to give them more time to assemble packages after the summer slowdown. That would distance TIFF from Venice and Telluride, for better or worse, and push it close to San Sebastian. The conversation goes on…

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