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Thamela Mpumlwana, Donisha Prendergast and Charles Officer attend the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival screening of ‘Akilla’s Escape’ at West Island Open Air Cinema at Ontario Place on September 12, 2020 in Toronto, Ontario.
(Sept. 11, 2020 – Source: Getty Images North America)
There’s little that hasn’t been said already about the tremendous impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the film industry, let alone the world in general. How the various regions of the world has chosen to react to the Coronavirus has produced a surprisingly large array of results; while many nations have managed to contain the virus to a point where infections and deaths are near all-time lows, other nations have yet to achieve such success, though this has done little to stop them from trying to return to normal. The variation in how different parts of the world have dealt with the Coronavirus up to this point has led to the film industry taking very different approaches when releasing their work throughout the globe. International releases of larger films are either being slowly rolled out into one market at a time or immediately dropped onto streaming services for in-home viewing. Film festivals have also made several changes to how they operate, and there are two in particular that stand out: the Venice International Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival.
As discussed in a previous article, the Venice International Film Festival remained a primarily on-site festival, with the majority of films being presented in the traditional theatrical manner. With there still being concern for the spread of the Coronavirus, multiple different strategies were employed in order to reduce such spread. Some of these strategies are quite familiar to those who have witnessed their own local movie theater reopen, from reduced seating that enforces social distancing to temperature checks at numerous checkpoints throughout the festival. Others have been more unique to the Venice International Film Festival and few places elsewhere, with the most notable being a large barrier around the red carpet that separates the figures strolling down the carpet from the journalists reporting on the event (while simultaneously preventing non-industry individuals from showing up and taking up too much space). Even with such drastic measures however, there was very little that prevented the festival from being held without any major situations, and as the Venice International Film Festival drew to a close on September 12th, it was more or less safe to say that the event was a success.
The Toronto International Film Festival, meanwhile, took a somewhat different approach when it came to its screening of certain films. A few months prior to the festival, organizers had announced that while some films would be shown in theaters as they had been in the years prior, others would be released onto a streaming platform for in-home viewing. Said platform would be known as the Digital TIFF Bell Lightbox; while the service would showcase past festival favorites prior to the beginning of this year’s festival, it would then provide options for either industry professionals (critics and other members of the film industry) and the public (specifically Canadian citizens) that would determine what new films could be accessed depending on the role of the user. As for films shown theatrically, the TIFF Bell Lightbox, a venue that had long been a staple of the Toronto International Film Festival, would show a select number of films with social distancing practices put into place, and outdoor locations such as Ontario Place and Polson Park would serve as locations for outdoor viewing. In addition, because celebrities and filmmakers will not be able to attend the festival as easily in the past, the Toronto International Film Festival has selected fifty of these individuals to serve as “Festival Ambassadors” that would promote the festival through various digital and interactive programs. This list of Ambassadors includes a wide variety of talent, from familiar names like Brie Larson and Rian Johnson to international faces such as Saudi Arabian director Haifaa al-Mansour and Nigerian-born Genevieve Nnaji.
When comparing the techniques used by each of these festivals, one can get a better sense of where each of these parts of the world are at in regards to how they have handled the COVID-19 pandemic. While strict safety measures had been put into place at the Venice International Film Festival, the fact that the event was still able to take place predominantly in person at many of the festival’s various theaters and venues indicates that, although the Coronavirus has not been completely eradicated, the environment is now safe enough where, as long as certain conditions have been met, there is no reason why the festival could not be held in its traditional format. The Toronto International Film Festival, on the other hand, does not seem to have such confidence at the moment. This may have less to do with Canada’s approach to combating the Coronavirus (new cases have actually fallen quite sharply in recent weeks) as it does with how its southern neighbor the United States is faring. Unlike much of the rest of the world, the United States has not been quite successful enough in containing the disease, and it’s understandable for the Toronto International Film Festival to be concerned about those coming in from America and being potential carriers of the virus. The primarily digital release of the festival’s most noteworthy films may not be the most ideal, but it is most likely the safest option for the time being, and it does have the benefit of being more accessible to those living outside Toronto (even if the public option is limited only to those living in Canada).
Despite these differences, there is little to suggest that both the Venice International Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival aren’t capable of kicking off the awards season without a hitch as they have in the past. Having already reached its conclusion, Venice has already introduced its fair share of awards contenders, with much attention being placed on Chinese filmmaker Chloe Zhao and her film “Nomadland”, which stars Academy Award winner Frances McDormand in the lead role. The film was the recipient of the festival’s highest honor, the Golden Lion Award for Best Picture; considering the three previous winners of the award have all been Best Picture nominees at the Oscars (one, 2017’s “The Shape of Water”, even won), it’s safe to say that “Nomadland” has a bright future ahead of it. Still, the award season has only just begun, so there are still plenty of other films that could just as easily come out as major contenders. With TIFF still carrying on, there may be another contender sooner than expected.
