Festival Spotlight: Toronto
This week I’m introducing a new format called Festival Spotlight. Here we will take a closer look at one individual film festival, and discover where we can find some of its most notable films.
Check out this week’s interactive menu right here.
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There are over 5,000 film festivals worldwide each year. These range from the preeminent ones we are all aware of including Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, and Venice to other lesser-known festivals such as, oh I don’t know, Armenia’s Golden Apricot Festival for example. But no matter a festival’s size, prominence, or age they all strive to curate a slate of films that reflect that organization’s individual ethos.
For our first Festival Spotlight, we’re going to study the Toronto International Film Festival which just completed its 44th year.
Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has become one of the leading festivals worldwide. In its early days, Toronto acted as a kind of aggregator as it filled its programs with films from other film festivals around the world. At that time, it was known as the Toronto Festival Of Festivals. That moniker lasted only a couple of years as the organization grew and the event became more of a film destination in its own right.
To date, there have been over 8,000 films screened at the festival. Each year TIFF hands out between 8-10 juried prizes, as well as its top award called The People’s Choice Award. This award is based on votes from those attending the festival and is weighted against the size of that film’s screening audience. In other words, a “larger” film showing in front of more people is on an equal playing field with a lesser-known title that is shown to fewer.
Nearly 70% of all the films that have taken home the People’s Choice honor have been nominated for an Oscar, and 41% of them have won at least one. Additionally, the blended score (IMDB rating, Metacritic, and Rotten Tomatoes score) average is 78% for all the films with this distinction. All of this suggests that this prize is a strong indicator of a film’s overall critical success.
TIFF strikes a delicate balance between being truly international while also showcasing Canadian films and filmmakers. Here is the worldwide breakdown of the over 800 films that have competed in the prize categories in Toronto.
And while the festival welcomes filmmakers from around the world, it certainly celebrates Canada’s own as evident by this view of the directors that have been hosted the most at TIFF.
The festival has also found other innovative ways to demonstrate the national pride of Canadian cinema. Though not officially a part of the TIFF event each year, one of the most intriguing things they do is a once-a-decade compilation of the 10 best Canadian films of all time. The list has been generated every 10 years since 1984 by polling Canadian filmmakers and critics alike. What’s fascinating about this list is that films can either maintain their status or drop off each decade. This churn is interesting to look at in how it reflects the evolution of Canadian filmmaking as well as broader cultural tastes.
With such a rich cinematic history for the country and festival itself, this week’s menu is meant to highlight the best of TIFF historically.
Around 35% of all the films in prize contention in the history of the festival are available to stream in the US. The platform breakdown looks like this.
Our menu for the week hones in further on the films that have won the People’s Choice Award and/or have been listed in the Top Ten Canadian Films Of All Time. Of that cohort, 52 titles are available to watch.
As always, my goal is to present a list that is a good mix of old favorites and potential new discoveries.
Enjoy your exploration!