I’m not entirely sure attending TIFF this year was worth it. Sure, there’s still a full two days of screenings left, but what the pandemic has done to this festival is devastating. The capacity restrictions, which are understandable given Canada’s restrictive COVID laws, made it very hard to book tickets for some of the higher-profile films such as “Dune” and “Belfast.” Good thing then that the generosity of studio publicists enabled me to watch most of them.
The vibe itself was morose. Press and industry presence was very scant, and I’ve spoken to many who regretted not attending Telluride or Venice instead. The world premieres have also been slim pickings. The big one, “Belfast,” was stolen, at the very last minute by Telluride, and what we were left with were rather mediocre “buzz” titles such as “Dear Evan Hansen,” “The Starling,” and “The Forgiven.”
Even worse, there were a bunch of Telluride/Venice titles missing in Toronto such as Pedro Almodóvar’s “Parallel Mothers,” Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter,” Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God,” Marcus Reinaldo Green’s “King Richard” and Mike Mills’ “C’mon C’mon.” Why did they not make the trek to Canada?
While fests such as Cannes and Venice have made it a priority to continue on with the fervour passion of cinephiles demanding the show must go on, Toronto decided to play it safe this year. This is, of course, not a dig and could very much just be the underlying reality of being in Canada during the age of COVID — and curfews were he norm here when things were really bad.
The festival’s decision to have a digital component may also have scared off some of the major studios, but then again the thick of the lineup wasn’t even available to screen online, puzzling many who expected a larger library of titles to stream at the comfort of their own homes.
It’s not like Canada isn’t a highly vaccinated populace either. 80% of eligible Torontonians have been fully vaccinated — a much higher percentage than most of Europe or the United States. It all begs us to ask a very dicey and uncomfortable question: Are the glory days of the Toronto International Film Festival behind us? Has the pandemic destroyed a world-class film festival? When all is said and done, and the pandemic is finally behind us, there will no doubt be negative effects to be uncovered in the movie world, let’s hope TIFF isn’t one of them.