What’s Next for Toronto Film Fest at 50 Years?
The Toronto Film Festival returned to full strength for its recent 2024 edition after the disruption of the pandemic and the 2023 Hollywood actors strike.
Now, as the prestigious event approaches its 50th year in 2025, TIFF organizers are looking to embrace an increasing confluence of technology and movies ahead of launching an official media content market in 2026.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Cameron Bailey, CEO of TIFF, doesn’t appear phased by criticism of the 2024 edition for having too few potential Oscar contenders in its opening weekend lineup after likely awards season entrants like Emilia Pérez, Anora and Conclave arrived in Toronto but debuted at Cannes, Venice or Telluride.
“Every festival looks at premier status, but we’ve learned over the years that films that launch at festivals with a number of big-name films, sometimes those films come out that same year, sometimes they come out the next year,” Bailey tells The Hollywood Reporter, pointing to Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker being released a year before it earned Oscar glory.
He also cites the surprise top audience award winner at Toronto last September, Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck, selling to Neon soon after TIFF wrapped and well ahead of a theatrical release in summer 2025. “We’re really looking at the long view,” Bailey insists.
Eyes on the longer horizon come as Toronto gets set to stage its 50th edition in 2025 and solidify the annual September film festival after years of unprecedented disruption. “This is a really challenging landscape for the cultural sector generally. We’ve certainly seen some of our colleagues really struggle. We’ve had our own struggle over the last few years as well, coming out of the pandemic and with a strike last year,” Bailey says.
Changes to Toronto’s DNA, as it looks to the next half-century, include a continuing effort to stretch out its official film lineup schedule, which includes a priority on buzzy international films towards the end of Toronto’s 11-day run. That gets TIFF well away from its controversial world premiere policy unveiled in 2014 that aimed to discourage distributors from premiering a film in Telluride or Venice before arriving in Toronto.
That stance aimed to defend TIFF’s reputation as the official award season launchpad, only to see U.S. distributors call Toronto’s bluff and debut films in Venice or Telluride first and opt for later Toronto screening dates or bypass the Canadian festival altogether.
“Certainly over the last five to 10 years, we’ve seen and we’ve deliberately tried to make sure that the festival is vital and exciting with lots of big new films well into the second week, and we’ve had some good success there,” Bailey insists.
TIFF organizers also see irony in Oscar contenders increasingly being screened at Toronto in its second week, after a quieter opening weekend, following past criticism from film buyers that Toronto was too front-end loaded and frenzied during its first four days, leaving key films to be overlooked.
But with the more intimate Venice and Telluride and their earlier starts granting those rival festivals an edge over a more populist Toronto event, TIFF is looking with its digital transformation to keep pace on the road to the Oscars.
That includes reimagining Toronto through the lens of influencers quickly gaining attention on social media and other digital platforms, like Letterbox, who are playing an increasing role during awards season. “More and more, we’re starting to see what actually ladders up award season can really come through less traditional media avenues,” Anita Lee, chief programming officer at TIFF, tells THR.
She points to A24’s Everything, Everywhere All at Once, which premiered at SXSW, not Toronto, Telluride or Venice, and rode word of mouth generated by a new breed of cinema influencers. “That film really came up through the grassroots, through various communities, through really strong social media buzz that became this momentum outside of what we might consider a traditional [Oscar] campaign strategy,” Lee adds.
That has TIFF organizers looking to appeal to the next generation of cinephiles increasingly viewing movies on streaming platforms and other digital venues as a formula for future growth. If anything, the lack of film sales during TIFF’s 2024 edition is put down in part to an evolving indie creator economy, where deals take longer to complete because they become more complicated as the digital era evolves.
Bailey argues that these days there are far fewer all-night bidding wars after a movie premieres, especially on the opening weekend, because the entertainment business has evolved across a range of release platforms and windowing strategies.
“The industry is just different now, and there’s different players operating in different ways,” he notes. Toronto world premieres like the 2024 opening night film, Nutcrackers, starring Ben Stiller; Harbin, the historical spy-thriller directed by Woo Min-ho and starring Hyun Bin; and Laura Piani’s Jane Austen Wrecked My Life all sold during TIFF’s Sept. 5 to 15 run.
But that left a raft of Toronto titles to sell after the festival wrapped. To date, the 2024 edition has seen the sale of 71 acquisition titles in its official lineup.
While Toronto remains dependent on star-driven Hollywood titles to fill its red carpets and draw the international media and sponsors, the festival is also looking to a new breed of international filmmakers with an eye toward getting their movies seen in the face of regional and even global streaming competition.
This follows Oscar glory for Parasite and other foreign-language titles making it into the best picture competition, enabling TIFF to leverage Toronto’s multicultural communities to build word of mouth for international films and talent.
“More international stakeholders and companies are more interested in exploring that path. So we’re looking at ways to position those titles with the right audience, with the right influencers, with the right stakeholders at TIFF,” Lee adds.
Toronto is also being deliberate in pitching its first-ever official market in 2026 as a bazaar for content, and not just movies. “Of course, film is the core that TIFF has always done and represented, but [TV] series will also be a larger part of the content market. And we’re also looking at XR [extended reality] and how content is moving across platforms,” Lee explains.
Toronto’s content market will also focus for the first time on splashy U.S. film packages and select international titles looking for financing and territory sales. The festival will have a separate arm to run the official content market and will use its longstanding industry ties and relationships to ensure its success.
“We’re not beginning from scratch,” Lee says, referring to how Toronto has hosted an unofficial film market during its annual September run for half a century. The official content market will use more technology and data sources as part of Toronto’s digital push.
Adds Lee: “Those are the areas that we will be really leaning into to make the market as nimble as possible, to be something people can engage with year-round for their business and really be able to transform as the industry changes.”
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
Sign up for THR's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
