For Cameron Bailey, CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival, things are looking up. The 2023 event is personal, doing what it does best: accessible, open, public-facing, audience-friendly programming. “Our brand is an audience and has been from the beginning,” Bailey said in a phone interview, along with program director Anita Lee.
They spoke with IndieWire ahead of their first teaser programming announcement on June 28, which will be followed by the TIFF gala release and selections from special presentations on July 19.
Attendance at screenings last year reached 275,000, one of TIFF’s highest numbers since 2018 and 2019 before the pandemic. In 2021, the festival was still dealing with border restrictions, but in 2022 “people came back,” Bailey said. Gone are the online screenings caused by the pandemic. “We built our reputation on personal experience,” Bailey said. “We have films from major stakeholders, streamers and studios.”
A TIFF exhibition space TIFF Bell Lightbox does business when it can get more commercial titles, like local heroine Sarah Polley’s Women Talking and fellow Oscar contender Triangle of Sadness. “We’ve made some strategic changes focusing on a younger audience,” Lee said. Celine Song’s Sundance hit Past Lives also performed well among younger moviegoers.
For decades, TIFF has been known as the studio’s fall launch pad. Today, Bailey said, programming has evolved. “It’s a good balance between movies from traditional studios and streamers,” he said. “Last year we had Paramount+ and Hulu along with the bigger traditional streamers. Everyone is at the table now.”
Although the festival grew to 260 films in mid-2010, Bailey said it “became unwieldy for both the press and film stakeholders”. Today, TIFF aims for 200 features, more or less.
Bailey, who said he is in daily contact with sellers, said top Hollywood agencies “are coming back in a big way. Businesses want to do business in person again.”
Industry buyers will screen acquisition prospects at Industry Selects market screenings, which are not open to the public but to select TIFF invited members. Last year, Focus Features bought Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers (Nov. 22, 2023), a Christmas story starring Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, from Industry Selects.
The festival continues to function as a launching pad for the Oscars. His gala honor last year went to Michelle Yeoh and Brendan Fraser, who both took home acting Oscars. And about 50 TIFF titles were nominated or won Oscars, Bailey said, including the People’s Choice Award winner, Steven Spielberg’s personal “The Fabelmans.”
Of course, Toronto still competes for world premieres with the Telluride, Venice, London and New York festivals. “We’re all in it for the same reasons,” said Bailey, who believes talking to each other during the pandemic has made his rivals more collegial. “Their elbows aren’t as sharp.”