The 49th Toronto International Film Festival has been running since Thursday. Until a few years ago, TIFF was the premier autumn festival, but has since been overtaken by Venice and Telluride. Our guest author Jason Gorber, a renowned film journalist from Toronto, takes a look at the status quo for SPOT. And what could come next.
It’s been a challenging few years for the Toronto International Film Festival. Since 2019, which very much felt like the peak of its decade+ of dominance of the fall festival season, it suffered some major wounds, most outside its control, some very much self-inflicted.
By 2020 the global pandemic obviously affected the festival in ways that were existentially concerning, regaled to drive-in screenings and a stay-at-home model. 2021 and 2022 saw things coming back slowly, but by then Venice, under the direction of Alberto Barbera, starting to significantly poach titles that previously would have been shoo-ins for TIFF.
By 2023, the WGA and SAG strikes deeply curtailed the talent that would arrive for red carpets here, a significant portion of what drives both ticket sales and international buzz. Worse still, the attempt to bypass this limitation by programming a slew of first-time films by established stars – the DGA’s acceptance of contractual terms an actor/director was free to participate in premieres – backfired in quite substantial ways. Many of the films were forgettable at best, risible at worst, and even then a considerable number of these supposed stars didn’t bother leaving the confines of their homes to attend.
Furthermore, many of the top films of Venice 2023, including the likes of the Oscar winning “Poor Things”, as well as nominated films such as “Maestro” and “Ferrari”, were in years past exactly the kind of films that would be begging to bow to TIFF audiences first. There’s also the simultaneous rise of Telluride, starting when it added sneaks of previously-announced TIFF prems to sneakily screen certain titles for its exclusive, disproportionally wealthy crowd, many of whom are Academy members.
So beyond worries about plague and strikes, it’s this double barrel hit, matched with moves from New York and London, that is most reshaping how TIFF is able to compete for the role of the global leader of the fall fest season.
As such, 2024 is very much an attempt for TIFF to reassert itself and not only continue the “festival of festival” tradition that was fundamental to its funding almost five decades ago, but in a larger, more fundamental way, how relevant it remains for the gaze of international audiences and filmmakers alike.
On paper at least there’s the hope of a massive influx of both audience members and films that will occupy much of this year’s cinematic discourse. Naturally, many Canadian films make their world premieres here, such as Kaniehtiio Horn’sIndigenous revenge thriller “Seeds”, while others, such as Matthew Rankin’s sublime “Universal Language” (Canada’s entry for best international film at next year’s Oscars), to David Cronenberg’s latest “The Shrouds”, already had their bows back at Cannes in May.
Some of the major World Premieres that TIFF snagged include Marielle Heller’s “Nightbitch”, the Disney+ debut of (sometime local Toronto-area resident) Elton John’s biodoc “Never Too Late”, DreamWorks Animation’s “The Wild Robot”, Ron Howard’s “Eden” with Jude Law and Sydney Sweeney, “We Live in Time” starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, and “K-Pops”, a dramedy from superstar drummer Anderson .Paak.
Mike Flanagan, whose “Oculus” debuted here as part of the midnight madness slate back in 2013, premiered his adaptation of Stephen King’s novella “The Life of Chuck” to rapturous response, while Canadian icon Pamela Anderson was joined by an ensemble including recent Oscar-winner Jamie Lee Curtis in Gia Coppola’s “The Last Showgirl”.
Nick Hamm’s “William Tell”, Karrie Crouse’s “Hold Your Breath”, Max Minghella’s “Shell”, Samir Oliveros’ “The Luckiest Man in America”, and Marianne Elliott’s “The Salt Path” are but some of the many that are bowing in Toronto for the first time.
King Street, closed off for the first weekend of the fest, feels a bit more sparse than normal, but the screenings are full, the line-ups long, and the red carpets festooned with stars aplenty, from A-listers to talents to watch. The number of films that flat out avoided TIFF has reduced, and for every Venice showcase like “Joker: Folie à Deux” that skipped a trip to Toronto, films like the exceptional “Conclave” will be making a post-Telluride bow here.
The feeling after only a few days can best be described as cautiously optimistic. In what’s already a fairly middling year for films compared to the glory period of 2019 still hanging in the air, there’s still a sense for both discovery of new titles, but also another further push for fest faves the likes of Palme d’Or winner “Anora” by Sean Baker, the timely Berlinale doc “No Other Land”, or Munich Film Festival prize winner “Sad Jokes” by Fabian Stumm.
As the chaos of the opening weekends schedule settles in, time will tell at how many of these titles will play to critics and audiences alike. The ingredients are here for what’s still being dubbed the largest public film festival in the world (the organizers of Berlin dispute this claim) to fully get its mojo back this year, or, at the least, remind patrons of what a special event this can be, and, even more critically, draw new people to eschew the convenience of streaming and the rising costs and come to support the films being showcase in Toronto this year.
Jason Gorber