It’s now possible to see every movie playing at TIFF.
In a surprise release this morning, the Toronto International Film Festival announced a radical reconfiguration for its 2020 edition.
TIFF 2020, which will run from September 10-19, will be a much smaller affair, mixing physical and digital screenings, interactive talks, Q&As and cast reunions… and, somehow, drive-in screenings. Only 50 features will be screened, along with five collections of shorts. (A normal TIFF would screen more than 200 features and 11 or 12 shorts programs.)
“The pandemic has hit TIFF hard,” artistic director and co-head Cameron Bailey said in a statement. “Our teams have had to rethink everything and open our minds to new ideas.”
The festival’s release also confirmed “the reduction of 31 full-time staff positions” due to the pandemic, and the related closure of TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Eight features were announced including Ammonite, a queer romance from God’s Own Country writer/director Francis Lee starring Saoirse Ronan and Kate Winslet Another Round, a dark Danish comedy that reunites The Hunt’s director Thomas Vinterberg and star Mads Mikkelsen Halle Berry’s directorial debut Bruised, in which the Oscar winner plays a former MMA fighter trying to rebuild her relationship with her six-year-old son and Ricky Staub’s Concrete Cowboys, starring Idris Elba as a Philadelphia man who introduces his teenage son to the world of “urban horseback riding.”
Also announced for the festival are Fauna, a Mexico-Canada co-production from writer/director Nicolás Pereda Good Joe Bell, from Monsters And Men director Reinaldo Marcus Green, which stars Mark Wahlberg as an Oregon man who walks across America to honour his son 20-year-old writer/director/star Suzanne Lindon’s Spring Blossom, which made virtual news at Cannes and Naomi Kawase’s latest drama True Mothers.
The festival’s industry conference will take place entirely online this year, and TIFF intends to hold its Tribute Awards gala in some form. Last year’s splashy celebration of talent included honours for Meryl Streep, Taika Waititi, Mati Diop and Joaquin Phoenix.
And a new flourish this year is the announcement of the TIFF Ambassadors, “50 celebrated filmmakers and actors invited to help TIFF deliver a strong Festival this year for the film industry.”
Participating artists include Atom Egoyan, Sarah Gadon, Tantoo Cardinal, Denis Villeneuve, Alfonso Cuarón, Claire Denis, Lulu Wang, Nicole Kidman, Riz Ahmed, Rian Johnson and Martin Scorsese.
The festival intends to screen its entire program “as physical, socially-distanced screenings” in its first five days, adding that all physical events “will be contingent on the province’s reopening framework to ensure that festival venues and workplaces practise, meet and exceed public health guidelines.”
Movie theatres will not be cleared to reopen until Toronto enters Stage 3 of pandemic recovery, which includes the reopening of of all workplaces and relaxed restrictions on public gatherings. TIFF confirmed there will be no summer screenings in advance of the festival.
@normwilner
