Yesterday I was told by a friend from Toronto that festival head Cameron Bailey was thinking of going digital with the Toronto International Film Festival — that is, if we are still not recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic by September. At first, I thought that was a strange way of going about things, especially since TIFF is a festival platform that is, first and foremost, a major launchpad for big studio Oscar contenders. I doubt that studios like Sony, Warner Bros, A24 and Disney would want to risk piracy by premiering their films via a screener link platform.
Regardless, today we had that rumor confirmed by Bailey himself, in a statement that read as both a hopeful and cautious assessment of what’s to come for TIFF:
“We recognize that in planning for the festival now, there is still uncertainty about what ‘people coming together again’ will look like come September. This is why we are looking at both onsite and digital innovations that will provide options that will deliver for our audiences, support filmmakers and our partners, and bolster the industry,” Bailey said in a statement on Thursday.
Bailey alongside Festival co-head Joana Vicente said they are moving ahead with planning the September festival, but are considering moving some events online, to comply with safety precautions during this pandemic. More curiously, Bailey and Vicente added that they have been working hard to collaborate with other rival festivals that were earlier canceled or delayed to make this the biggest TIFF yet. "Our goal is to offer a united platform to share programming," Vicente said in a YouTube video.
Does that mean they would, more or less, collaborate with some of the festivals that were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and exclusively screen the highlights of their lineups as well? Already canceled festivals include SXSW, Tribeca, and, more intriguingly, Cannes being postponed until the unrealistic date of Late June/Early July. In between all those fests are the still-not-canceled Locarno, Telluride, and Venice Film Festivals — all of which may not go on as planned.
The 2020 Toronto Film Festival is set to run Sept. 10-20 in Toronto, and going online could be a landmark moment not just for film festivals worldwide, but for the inevitable transition we’ve been seeing the last 5 years of theatrical to streaming.