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Source: Deadline
Though the North American continent has been home for quite a few major film festivals over the past several decades, there are few that are as popular and revered as the Toronto International Film Festival. Taking place in the city of Toronto, the capital of the Canadian province of Ontario and the nation’s largest city overall, the festival (often referred to as TIFF for short) has become increasingly seen as a means for distributors to generate attention for whatever films they have chosen to compete in the coming awards season. Most of these films are usually targeted towards older audiences, films that may not necessarily be as highly anticipated as the usual output of summer blockbusters but can, under the right circumstances, become viable to receive any number of accolades and maintain some level of success in the long run. Such was the case for films like “Hustlers”, which premiered at TIFF in 2019, and “A Star is Born”, a film that also had its premiere at TIFF just a year prior. Both of these films went on to become immense critical and commercial successes, and they are only just a small sampling of the films that were able to take off at TIFF.
Admittedly, recent TIFF events have been a bit of a challenge due to the limitations forced upon the festival by the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the festival has not been outright canceled at any point during this time, the ways in which films have been exhibited has had to be altered dramatically, either through minimizing the number of people allowed to attend a given screening or holding some events entirely online to ensure no in-person contact. This year’s festival, however, will not have to contend with such issues; theaters will be allowed to fill capacity with no mask or vaccine mandates, and live discussions and press conferences will be held alongside the various films being screened. In many respects, this year’s festival is a return to the status quo that existed before the start of the pandemic, which is good news for the over two-hundred feature films that are expected to be shown at the 2022 event.
With eighteen galas and forty-five special presentations currently planned for the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, scheduled to take place next month between September 8th and September 18th, this year’s event will showcase around 260 feature films (as well as a good handful of short films), many of which hope to do good business later on in the fall and holidays seasons. In a statement released alongside the announcement of this year’s festival line-up, TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey expressed great confidence that the festival will play a major role reviving audience interest in smaller, more artistically driven films. “There are movies that will launch on the heels of the festival, that I hope adult audiences will see and revive that moviegoing habit,” Bailey claims. “Thankfully that’s been done with the summer blockbusters. There’s a different kind of movie that launches in the fall, and we’re hoping audiences go and see them.”
As many as nine world premieres for upcoming fall film fare have been revealed to be taking place at TIFF this year, and it’s safe to say that for many of these films, the levels of anticipation are at an all-time high. Opening the festival is the premiere of “The Swimmers”, which was directed by Sally El Hosaini and will later be distributed worldwide by streaming giant Netflix. Said company is also the international distributor to Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”, the follow-up to Johnson’s 2019 sleeper hit “Knives Out” that is also currently expected to premiere at TIFF this year. Hosaini and Johnson are among many acclaimed directors whose work will shine bright at the festival this year; also premiering their films are Nicholas Stoller with his latest comedy “Bros” (which he co-wrote with star Billy Eichner), Gina Prince-Bythewood with her historical epic “The Woman King”, and Steven Spielberg with his semi-autobiographical drama “The Fabelmans”. It’s that latter film that is especially notable in that it will be the first film directed by the “Jaws” and “Schindler’s List” auteur to premiere at TIFF, something that TIFF CEO Bailey seems very proud of. “When we saw the film, we responded in a strong emotional way,” Bailey claims. “I sent a note, which was passed on to Steven, about our own reaction to the film, how moved we were by it, how it’s a beautiful love letter to films and movies.”
Directors may be front and center when it comes to the films being shown at this year’s event, but that doesn’t mean the star power of cinema’s most well-known actors won’t also be essential in bringing awareness to the films they have been featured in. Jessica Chastain, who won an Academy Award last year for her performance in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (one of many films screened at the previous Toronto festival), will once again vy for awards as she acts with fellow Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne in Netflix’s “The Good Nurse”. They’re not the only pair headlining a film at TIFF this year though, as Nicolas Hoult and Ralph Fiennes, the stars of “The Menu”, and “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”’s Lily James and Emma Thompson providing potential acting competition for the coming awards season. In addition to these actors, the festival will also showcase the talents of such names as Jennifer Lawrence in the war drama “Causeway”, Anna Kendrick in the thriller “Alice, Darling”, and Nicolas Cage in the western “Butcher’s Crossing”.
Many of these features, as well as several others that haven’t been mentioned, will compete for the Toronto International Film Festival’s biggest prize, the Grolsch People’s Choice Award, which had previously gone to such films as “Jojo Rabbit” and “Belfast”, both of which (as did many others), went on to become major awards contenders in the months following their respective TIFF screenings. Whatever film ends up winning this year though, the festival overall will still be seen as a major victory, as it’s the first fully in-person event since 2019 and will likely see a massive turnout of eager audiences. “We are expecting full houses,” Bailey states. “We know from the ticket packages that we had going for the last few weeks, some of them have already gone off sale, but there’s a lot still available. There’s enough appetite for what we’ve seen so far that we’re expecting a big audience.”
