Peace, Love & Understanding Among the Stars
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is one of the biggest festivals in the world, and still manages to feel like an intimate celebration of people making cool stuff together
Hello everyone! Sorry for my absence. I was away from my keyboard longer than I wanted, thanks to the flurry of moving my daughter into her new apartment, followed by a bad bout of late-summer COVID.
I’m better now and well into the 50th anniversary of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Those of you who know me know this is my favourite time of year.
Growing up in Mississauga and going to university in Toronto, I have followed TIFF since its early days when it was known as the Festival of Festivals. I remember when the stars used to dine out at Bistro 660 on Bay Street, around the corner from my residence, and while I followed the reviews and star sightings in The Star and Now! Magazine, I, like most locals, never went.
It wasn’t until I had moved away to New Brunswick that I finally decided to stop watching from afar and actually buy some tickets and go, or more accurately, tell my parents who bought me tickets as a milestone birthday gift.
It was 2009, and back then, the stars still walked amongst us. Isabella Rossalini strolled by me as I waited outside the Ryerson Theatre (now Toronto Metropolitan University) for my first film, Women Without Men by Iranian director Shirin Neshat.
A few years later, my sister and I had to tell my dad he was sitting next to John Turturro, who had popped into TIFF Lightbox to catch a film the year he was at the festival in Woody Allen’s Fading Gigolo.
This past weekend, the cast of Knives Out – Daniel Craig, Glenn Close, Kerry Washington, Mila Kunis, Andrew Scott, Josh Brolin and Jeremy Renner – wandered by me at TIFF Lightbox as I waited to see Chai Vasarhelyi's new documentary Love + War about war photojournalist Lynsey Addario.
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Now back to the story…
Australian director Baz Luhrmann enjoyed dinner with friends at the table across from me at Alder restaurant the day after the world premiere of his documentary EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert.
Colombian reggaeton superstar J Balvin sat four rows in front of me at his acting debut in the world premiere of the Cape Breton crime drama Little Lorraine on Friday night.
Wolostoquik artist Jeremy Dutcher wandered by on King Street Saturday evening as I people-watched and enjoyed Thai curry with friends on the patio at Some Some; on Sunday, I heard his beautiful score for L’nu (Mi’kmaq) filmmaker Bretten Hannam’s supernature thriller Sk+te’kmujue’katik (At the Place of Ghosts), roughly pronounced as skuju-ge-mooch, (I think).
Seeing stars is fun, but that’s not why I eagerly return each year and enthusiastically encourage others to take in the festival.
I come to be lifted by the joy that permeates this corner of Toronto every September.
TIFF is one of the largest film festivals in the world – over 200 films are screening here from September 4-14th on 21 screens at five venues – but the atmosphere in the theatres feels more like opening night at one of my kid’s theatre productions.
People smile and hug in aisles and across rows, as crew, producers and cast members reunite. Women hoik up their strapless and sequined gowns as they negotiate the theatre stairs in heels, and the crowd cheers for every name that appears on the opening credits.
These are premieres, and regardless of the subject matter, the mood is always celebratory. As TIFF’s documentary programmer Thom Powers likes to say in his opening remarks, ‘You are the first audience in the world to see this film.’
Film was created to be a communal experience, the big screen filling our visual field and transporting us into the story, holding our individual attention while surrounding us with the sounds of others reacting with laughter, gasps, and silence.
It is a powerful experience to sit in silence with others in the 1,500-seat Roy Thomson Hall to witness Palestine 36 by Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir, and with 500 people at TIFF Lightbox for Meadowlarks, by Cree filmmaker Tasha Hubbard, two films that frame the sins of history through the devastating separation of children from their parents, and the forced erasure of their lives together.
Yet, there is joy as well in the applause we give as audience members, and the acceptance of it, often through tears, by the creators, and in the case of documentaries, the real-life subjects, standing on the stage to receive it.
These personal, intimate and very human interactions are what I seek out when I come to TIFF.
It is why I come here every year, to feel connected to people who want what I want: a more kind-hearted and joyous world, populated by people with the drive and creativity to get ‘er done.
Programming note: I’ll be posting reviews of my 16 TIFF films over the next little while, as I find time to write them.
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