Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the most prestigious and largest publicly attended film festivals in the world. Founded in 1976, the festival takes place every year in early September. The organization behind the film festival is also a permanent destination for film culture operating out of the TIFF Lightbox cultural centre, located in downtown Toronto.
The TIFF People's Choice Award – which is based on audience balloting – has emerged as an indicator of success during awards season, especially at the Academy Awards. Past recipients of this award include Oscar-winning films, such as Chariots of Fire, Life Is Beautiful, American Beauty, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Slumdog Millionaire, The King's Speech, Silver Linings Playbook, 12 Years a Slave, The Imitation Game, La La Land, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Green Book, Jojo Rabbit, Nomadland, Belfast and American Fiction.
TIFF starts the Thursday night after Labour Day and lasts for eleven days. The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival took place from September 5 through 15, 2024. The 2025 Toronto International Film Festival took place from September 4 through 14, 2025.
, the festival's CEO is Cameron Bailey.
Background
The Toronto International Film Festival was first launched as the Toronto Festival of Festivals, collecting the best films from other film festivals around the world and showing them to eager audiences in Toronto. Founded by Bill Marshall, Dusty Cohl, and Henk Van der Kolk, the inaugural event took place from October 18 through 24, 1976. That first year, 35,000 filmgoers watched 127 films from 30 countries presented in ten programmes. Piers Handling had been the festival's director and CEO since 1994, while Noah Cowan became co-director of TIFF in 2004. In late 2007, Cowan became the artistic director of TIFF Lightbox, while longtime programmer Cameron Bailey succeeded as co-director. As of 2013, Bailey was the artistic director of the Toronto International Film Festival, as well as TIFF Lightbox's year round programming.TIFF was once centred on the Yorkville neighbourhood, but the Toronto Entertainment District later gained a greater level of prominence. TIFF is known for the celebrity buzz it brings to the area with international media setting up near its restaurants and stores for photos and interviews with the stars. In 2010, TIFF opened its permanent headquarters, TIFF Lightbox, a year-round home for the appreciation of film in the heart of downtown Toronto, although TIFF films are still screened at a wider variety of venues, including the Scotiabank Theatre Toronto, rather than exclusively at the Lightbox.TIFF has grown, steadily adding initiatives throughout the years. TIFF Cinematheque and the Film Reference Library opened in 1990. The TIFF Kids International Film Festival launched in 1998. Film Circuit began exhibiting independent and Canadian films in under-serviced cities across Canada in 1994.
The festival also organizes the TIFF Film Circuit, a program which partners with local organizations in other Canadian towns and cities to present screenings of films that have previously been shown at TIFF.
In May 2024, TIFF announced that it will launch a full film market in 2026.
History
The festival was founded in 1976 at the Windsor Arms Hotel by Bill Marshall, Henk Van der Kolk and Dusty Cohl. Beginning as a collection of the best-regarded films from film festivals around the world, it had an inaugural attendance of 35,000. Ironically, however, Hollywood studios withdrew their submissions from TIFF due to concerns that Toronto audiences would be too parochial for their feature releases.In 1978, the festival first began billing itself as "the Toronto International Film Festival" as a supplementary name, although it retained Festival of Festivals as its primary branding. At the same time it moved from the Harbour Castle Hotel to the Plaza II, and Wayne Clarkson replaced Marshall as the festival director. The number of galas increased from one to two per night and the Canadian Film Awards were incorporated into the festival.
The Festival of Festivals name was dropped in 1994, with the event becoming known exclusively as the Toronto International Film Festival at that time. From 1994 to 2009, the umbrella organization running TIFF was named "Toronto International Film Festival Group". In 2009, the umbrella organization TIFFG was renamed to TIFF.
In 2001, Perspective Canada, the programme that had focused on Canadian films since 1984, was replaced by two programmes:
- Canada First!, a forum for Canadian filmmakers presenting their first feature-length work, featuring eight to 15 films, and
- Short Cuts Canada, which includes 30-40 Canadian short films.
In 2007, it was announced that the organization generates an estimated annual impact of $67 million CAD. By 2011, that benefit had grown to $170 million CAD.
In 2016, 397 films from 83 countries were screened at 28 screens in downtown Toronto venues, welcoming an estimated 480,000 attendees, over 5,000 of whom were industry professionals.
In 2017, TIFF reduced the number of films screened compared to the 2016 festival with 255 feature-length films in 2017, and also eliminated two venues that had been used in prior years.
In 2019, it was reported that due to a request from its owner, Cineplex Entertainment, no TIFF films distributed by subscription video-on-demand services are being screened at Scotiabank Theatre—which has been considered the "primary" venue of the festival.
The 2020 edition was both in-person and virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the virtual platform provided by Shift72. The film screenings were initially declared as "masks optional", a decision that drew criticism for creating a potential superspreader event as the social nature of the festival could increase the risk for COVID-19 transmission. The festival reversed the decision within 24 hours, citing a surge of new cases in Ontario, and made masks mandatory at the physical screenings.
The 2020 festival also saw the introduction of Industry Selects, an ad hoc film market for films seeking commercial distribution. Due to the pandemic, which prevented members of the North American film industry from travelling to international film festivals where many of the Industry Selects films were screened, they were available on the festival's industry platform, but not on the commercial platform for the general public. Introduced at the time as a temporary measure due to the pandemic, it was converted into a permanent part of the TIFF program in 2022, and became the nucleus of the festival's plans to launch a full film market in 2026.
Notable film premieres
Films such as American Beauty, Ray, Mr. Nobody, 127 Hours, Black Swan, Disobedience, The Five Obstructions, Singapore Sling, I Am Love and The Fabelmans have premiered at TIFF. Jamie Foxx's portrayal of Ray Charles ultimately won him the Academy Award for Best Actor while Slumdog Millionaire went on to win eight Oscars at the 2009 Academy Awards. Precious, which won the 2009 TIFF People's Choice Award, went on to win two Oscars at the 82nd Academy Awards. The King's Speech, the winner of the 2010 TIFF People's Choice Award, won four Oscars at the 83rd Academy Awards, while Silver Linings Playbook, the winner of the 2012 TIFF People's Choice Award, went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for Jennifer Lawrence. In 2019, the festival opened with Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, the first time the festival ever opened with a Canadian documentary film.Many Hollywood studios premiere their films in Toronto due to TIFF's easy-going non-competitive nature, relatively inexpensive costs, eager film-fluent audiences and convenient timing.
TIFF Lightbox
In 2007, the Festival Group began construction on TIFF Lightbox, a new facility at the corner of King and John Streets in downtown Toronto, on land donated by Ivan Reitman and family. The $181 million facility was sponsored by Bell Canada, with additional support from the Government of Ontario and Government of Canada.In 2010, the organization opened its new headquarters at TIFF Lightbox. The facility, designed by local firm KPMB Architects, provides extensive year-round galleries, cinemas, archives and activities for cinephiles. The five-storey facility contains five cinemas, two gallery spaces, film archives and an extensive reference library, study spaces, film lab facility, and a research centre. There is also a gift shop, two restaurants, a lounge, a cafe, and a three-storey atrium. Cooperatively with Daniels Corporation, there is a 46-storey condominium atop, called the Festival Tower.
The first film screening was Bruce McDonald's Trigger. The first exhibition was a retrospective on Tim Burton, organized by the Museum of Modern Art. Subsequent exhibitions include Fellini: Spectacular Obsessions, Grace Kelly: From Movie Star to Princess, Designing 007: 50 Years of Bond Style, and Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition, all of which were organized by TIFF, as well as one called Essential Cinema, featuring posters, images and props from TIFF's The Essential 100 list of films.
The Film Reference Library is a large Canadian film research collection. The library is a free resource for film lovers, filmmakers, students, scholars, and journalists, and is located on the fourth floor of the TIFF Lightbox. An affiliate member of the International Federation of Film Archives, the FRL promotes Canadian and global film scholarship by collecting, preserving, and providing access to a comprehensive collection of film prints, and film-related reference resources (including books, periodicals, scripts, research files, movies, press kits, and about 80 special collections.
In 2016, the festival received a donation of 1,400 film prints, and launched a campaign to raise money for the preservation and storage of the films.