TIFF24 Preview

Between the pandemic, dual SAG-WGA strikes, and a downturn in the sponsorship market, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has had its fair share of problems over the years. Even with these obstacles, the festival has continued to make every edition of its star-studded festival a memorable one, always brimming with headliners and under-the-radar gems. Still, there has been an unspoken agreement amongst festival goers that TIFF hasn’t been able to replicate its peak form that occurred between 2014 and 2019. That nagging feeling has seemingly subsided with the finalization of this year’s lineup, which, on paper, might be the best one ever assembled by CEO Cameron Bailey and his programming team.

Considering that all three take place within the same relative time frame, the competition between the Venice International Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, and TIFF has always been strong. With Venice beginning in late August, Telluride over Labor Day weekend, and TIFF the week after, the Canadian festival has always been at a disadvantage in obtaining world premieres. The festival tried to leverage its enormous Oscar influence to sway some Venice and Telluride-bound projects over to TIFF, but that tended to backfire and keep projects out of the lineup. In several interviews, Bailey has stated that the programming team has loosened their restrictions on premiere statuses over the years, saying that, although a North American/International/Canadian premiere wasn’t as juicy, it was better than holding firm on world premieres and missing out on stuff altogether.

This year’s lineup vividly illustrates that mindset, with almost every glitzy premiere at Venice and Telluride making their way over to TIFF immediately afterward, a welcome strategy shift for someone like me. Why spend thousands of dollars to fly to Italy or the Colorado mountains to get just an appetizer for the fall festival assortment when you can have the whole buffet in Toronto a few days later?

Venice titles that will be making their North American premieres at TIFF include Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language debut, The Room Next Door, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, Justin Kurzel’s The Order, Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, and Halina Reijn’s Babygirl. Each of these films has a firm place on my schedule, especially The Brutalist, which I had little faith that TIFF would include considering its 215-minute runtime and dour subject matter. Thankfully, I won’t be seeing either of the Opening Night premieres (Nutcrackers and The Cut), so I can go to bed early and be energized for that 9:00 am press screening.

Immediately after that screening, I’ll be hitting a trio of world premieres within the famed Visa Screening Toom at the Princess of Wales Theatre. First up will be Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl, starring Pamela Anderson. Then there will be a double bill consisting of Mike Flanagan’s starry The Life of Chuck and John Crowley’s We Live in Time from A24, featuring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh as star-crossed lovers.

The next morning will feature two of the biggest titans of world cinema over the last few decades: Pedro Almodóvar and Mike Leigh (Hard Truths). Ron Howard’s Eden, the film with the starriest cast of the festival, will premiere that evening in Roy Thomson Hall, followed by Marielle Heller’s gonzo Nightbitch.

It’ll be a double Ralph Fiennes day on Sunday as I catch Conclave and The Return. The former is the highly anticipated follow-up from director Edward Berger after the wild success of All Quiet on the Western Front, and the latter is an adaptation of the myth of Odysseus that marks the reunification of Fiennes and his The English Patient co-star Juliette Binoche. Sandwiched between those screenings is The Order, a film I’ve had my eye on for quite some time as Justin Kurzel has produced some of my favorite films of the past decades (Macbeth, Nitram).

The next few days follow that same cadence, with the remainder of the Venice and Telluride holdovers making their northern premieres. While everyone else will be experiencing the madness of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis in Roy Thomson Hall on Monday night, I’ll be across the street seeing Queer. Then, the next night, I’ll see The Piano Lesson and Babygirl, with Wednesday’s headliners being Saturday Night and The End. Also on Wednesday are two under-the-radar Venice titles that I’m extremely intrigued by: Harvest and April.

From there, my schedule will become more fluid throughout. There’ll still be plenty of screening opportunities for stuff like The Fire Inside, Unstoppable, Without Blood, The Shadow Strays, and The Friend, as well as other titles not on my watchlist that receive great buzz. Woman of the Hour was one of those films last year, as I didn’t secure a ticket for it until after many of my friends raved about it.

All in all, I plan to see around 30-35 films throughout the ten-day festival, with a few of them likely to become some of my favorites of the year. There’s nothing like indulging in so much good cinema in such a short amount of time, all while mingling with friends and colleagues from around the world. I’ll be publishing full reviews for select titles, with others being condensed into dispatches and my post-festival recap. You can take a look at the full slate of festival titles on the TIFF website.