![]() Festival poster | |
Opening film | American Utopia by Spike Lee |
---|---|
Closing film | A Suitable Boy by Mira Nair |
Location | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
Founded | 1976 |
Awards | Nomadland (People's Choice Award) |
Festival date | September 10–21, 2020 |
Website | tiff |
The 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, the 45th event in the Toronto International Film Festival series, was held from September 10 to 21, 2020. [1] Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto, the festival took place primarily on an online streaming platform, although limited in-person screenings still took place within the constraints of social distancing restrictions. [2]
Officially the festival concluded on September 19, with the final film premieres and events taking place that day; [3] however, due to the 48-hour rental period applying to film viewings on the online platform, the festival platform remained open until September 21 to honour tickets purchased on closing day. [4]
The festival's executive director Joana Vicente and artistic director Cameron Bailey spoke about the festival's plans in a video conference call launching the international We Are One: A Global Film Festival; [2] Bailey also discussed some of the festival's plans in an interview on IndieWire's "Screen Talk" podcast. [5] Plans included efforts to act as a "united platform" to screen films that had been slated to premiere at other cancelled festivals such as the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, and efforts to capitalize on the resurgence of drive-in theaters by staging some live screenings at drive-in venues. [5] In a joint statement with the Venice Film Festival, the Telluride Film Festival and the New York Film Festival, which along with TIFF are generally considered the "big four" autumn film festivals that often compete with each other to land major film premieres in a normal year, the organizers of all four festivals committed to a spirit of collaboration and unity, designed "to serve the filmmakers, audiences, journalists and industry members who keep the film ecosystem thriving." [6]
On June 24, organizers indicated that a smaller program of 50 films would be screened in a conventional manner, using social distancing strategies such as drive-in or outdoor screenings, over the first five days of the festival, and would then remain available on a dedicated streaming platform for the remainder of the festival. [7] The digital platform was launched in July 2020 as the Digital TIFF Bell Lightbox, with a curated selection of past TIFF films available for short-term digital rental in the weeks leading up to the festival. [8] The digital platform included both a professional option for international critics and industry, and a public option available only to Canadian viewers; ticket prices were the same regardless of whether the viewer was attending a physical screening or watching the film online. The industry platform also included an additional program of 30 films not part of the official public program, designed to act as a film market due to the pandemic-associated shutdown of international travel. [9]
Venues for the festival included the TIFF Bell Lightbox, with social distancing strategies in place, as well as two outdoor screens at Ontario Place and one at Polson Pier. [10] The Isabel Bader Theatre was initially announced as one of the screening venues, but was removed from the event calendar due to social distancing restrictions remaining in place at the University of Toronto. [11] Initially, organizers announced that in-person film screenings would be "masks optional", but were criticized for creating a potential superspreader event as the social nature of the festival could increase the risk for COVID-19 transmission. [12] The festival reversed the decision within 24 hours, citing a surge of new cases in Ontario, and made masks mandatory at the physical screenings. [13]
With a smaller than normal program, both festival programmers and critics noted that films which have a tendency to be overlooked at a normal TIFF, such as documentaries and titles by emerging film directors in the Discovery program, could potentially have a better chance than usual of standing out and gaining attention. [14]
In 2021, Bailey and Vicente indicated that although the 2020 festival saw reduced ticket sales compared to 2019, it was simultaneously the most successful event in the festival's entire history in terms of business activity and sales to film distributors. [15]
Due to the unprecedented nature of the 2020 festival, and the fact that celebrities and filmmakers were largely not able to attend the festival in person, the festival announced a roster of 50 "TIFF Ambassadors", actors and filmmakers who helped to promote the festival through interactive digital experiences and events. [16]
The festival presented the TIFF Tribute Awards, which were introduced in 2019 to honour actors and filmmakers for distinguished achievements over the course of their careers. Honorees in 2020 included Anthony Hopkins, Chloe Zhao, Mira Nair and Kate Winslet. [17] For the first time, the ceremony was broadcast live by CTV Television Network, [18] and was hosted by Tyrone Edwards and Chloe Wilde of CTV's eTalk . [19]
Award winners were announced on September 20. The People's Choice Awards were still presented in all three categories; due to the reduced number of films in the Documentary and Midnight Madness streams, only winners were named for those awards rather than runners-up, although first and second runners-up were still named for the main People's Choice award. [20] However, some of the juried awards were suspended, or presented in a different form than usual; notably, the Platform Prize was not presented as no films were named to the Platform program, and the award for Best Canadian First Feature Film was not presented due to the limited number of eligible films. Canadian singer-songwriter Shawn Mendes, in association with TIFF, announced the creation of the Shawn Mendes Foundation Changemaker Award, which awards filmmakers who create films with a social message. [21]
Award | Film | Director |
---|---|---|
People's Choice Award | Nomadland | Chloé Zhao |
People's Choice Award, First Runner Up | One Night in Miami... | Regina King |
People's Choice Award, Second Runner Up | Beans | Tracey Deer |
People's Choice Award: Documentaries | Inconvenient Indian | Michelle Latimer |
People's Choice Award: Midnight Madness | Shadow in the Cloud | Roseanne Liang |
Best Canadian Feature Film | Inconvenient Indian | Michelle Latimer |
Best Canadian Feature Film, Honorable Mention | Fauna | Nicolás Pereda |
Best Canadian Short Film | Benjamin, Benny, Ben | Paul Shkordoff |
Best International Short Film | Dustin | Naïla Guiguet |
FIPRESCI Award | Beginning | Dea Kulumbegashvili |
NETPAC Award | Gaza mon amour | Tarzan Nasser, Arab Nasser |
Amplify Voices | The Disciple | Chaitanya Tamhane |
Night of the Kings | Philippe Lacôte | |
Amplify Voices, Honorable Mention | Downstream to Kinshasa | Dieudo Hamadi |
Changemaker Award | Black Bodies | Kelly Fyffe-Marshall |
Share Her Journey | Sing Me a Lullaby | Tiffany Hsiung |
American Utopia by Spike Lee was announced as the festival's opening film. [22] The festival also screened Chloé Zhao's film Nomadland , as part of a special arrangement which saw the film open at TIFF, NYFF and Venice all on the same day. [23]
The first batch of films slated for the festival was announced on June 24, 2020, [24] and more were announced on July 30. [25] The final announcement of short films and special events took place on August 25. [11]
English title | Original title | Director(s) | Production country |
---|---|---|---|
Ammonite | Francis Lee | United Kingdom, Australia | |
Bruised | Halle Berry | United States, United Kingdom | |
Concrete Cowboy | Ricky Staub | United States | |
David Byrne’s American Utopia | Spike Lee | United States | |
Good Joe Bell | Reinaldo Marcus Green | United States | |
I Care a Lot | J Blakeson | United States | |
Nomadland | Chloé Zhao | United States | |
One Night in Miami... | Regina King | United States | |
Pieces of a Woman | Kornél Mundruczó | Canada, Hungary, United States |
English title | Original title | Director(s) | Production country |
---|---|---|---|
Another Round | Druk | Thomas Vinterberg | Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden |
The Disciple | Chaitanya Tamhane | India | |
Falling | Viggo Mortensen | Canada, United Kingdom | |
The Father | Florian Zeller | France, United Kingdom | |
Penguin Bloom | Glendyn Ivin | Australia, United States | |
Shawn Mendes: In Wonder | Grant Singer | United States | |
Summer of 85 | Été 85 | François Ozon | France, Belgium |
True Mothers | 朝が来る, Asa ga Kuru | Naomi Kawase | Japan |
English title | Original title | Director(s) | Production country |
---|---|---|---|
Bandar Band | Manijeh Hekmat | Iran | |
New Order | Nuevo orden | Michel Franco | Mexico, France |
Night of the Kings | La Nuit des rois | Philippe Lacôte | Canada, Côte d'Ivoire, France, Senegal |
Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time | Felkészülés meghatározatlan ideig tartó együttlétre | Lili Horvát | Hungary |
Quo Vadis, Aida? | Jasmila Žbanić | Bosnia | |
Under the Open Sky | すばらしき世界, Subarashiki Sekai | Miwa Nishikawa | Japan |
English title | Original title | Director(s) | Production country |
---|---|---|---|
Notturno | Gianfranco Rosi | Italy, France, Germany |
English title | Original title | Director(s) | Production country |
---|---|---|---|
76 Days | Hao Wu, Weixi Chen, Anonymous | China, United States | |
City Hall | Frederick Wiseman | United States | |
Enemies of the State | Sonia Kennebeck | United States | |
Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds | Werner Herzog, Clive Oppenheimer | United States | |
Inconvenient Indian | Michelle Latimer | Canada | |
Lift Like a Girl | Ash Ya Captain | Mayye Zayed | Egypt, Denmark, Germany |
MLK/FBI | Sam Pollard | United States | |
The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel | Joel Bakan, Jennifer Abbott | Canada | |
No Ordinary Man | Aisling Chin-Yee, Chase Joynt | Canada |
English title | Original title | Director(s) | Production country |
---|---|---|---|
180° Rule | خط فرضی, Khate Farzi | Farnoosh Samadi | Iran |
Beans | Tracey Deer | Canada | |
Beginning | Dasatskisi | Dea Kulumbegashvili | Georgia, France |
The Best Is Yet to Come | Bu Zhi Bu Xiu | Wang Jing | China |
Gaza mon amour | Tarzan Nasser, Arab Nasser | Palestine, France, Germany, Portugal, Qatar | |
Limbo | Ben Sharrock | United Kingdom | |
Memory House | Casa de Antiguidades | João Paulo Miranda Maria | Brazil, France |
Shiva Baby | Emma Seligman | Canada, United States | |
Spring Blossom | Seize printemps | Suzanne Lindon | France |
Wildfire | Cathy Brady | Ireland, United Kingdom |
English title | Original title | Director(s) | Production country |
---|---|---|---|
4 North A | Jordan Canning, Howie Shia | Canada | |
Aniksha | Vincent Toi | Canada, Mauritius | |
The Archivists | Igor Drljaca | Canada | |
As Spring Comes | Comme la neige au printemps | Marie-Ève Juste | Canada |
Benjamin, Benny, Ben | Paul Shkordoff | Canada | |
Black Bodies | Kelly Fyffe-Marshall | Canada | |
David | Zach Woods | United States | |
Drought | Remi Itani | Lebanon | |
Dustin | Naïla Guiguet | France | |
Every Day's Like This | Lev Lewis | Canada | |
Found Me | David Findlay | Canada | |
The Game | Das Spiel | Roman Hodel | Switzerland |
History of Civilization | Zhannat Alshanova | Kazakhstan | |
In Sudden Darkness | Tayler Montague | United States | |
Loose Fish | Francisco Canton, Pato Martinez | Argentina, Morocco, United States | |
Marlon Brando | Vincent Tilanus | Netherlands | |
Mountain Cat | Shiluus | Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir | Mongolia |
Navozande, the Musician | Navozande, le musicien | Reza Riahi | France |
O, Black Hole! | Renee Zhan | United Kingdom | |
Our Hearts Beat Like War | Elinor Nechemya | Israel | |
Pilar | Yngwie Boley, Diana van Houten, J.J. Epping | Netherlands, Belgium | |
Point and Line to Plane | Sofia Bohdanowicz | Canada | |
The Price of Cheap Rent | Amina Sutton, Maya Tanaka | United States | |
RKLSS | Tank Standing Buffalo | Canada | |
Rules for Werewolves | Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux | Canada | |
Scars | Alex Anna | Canada | |
Shooting Star | Comme une comète | Ariane Louis-Seize | Canada |
Sing Me a Lullaby | Tiffany Hsiung | Canada | |
Sinking Ship | La Naufrage | Sasha Leigh Henry | Canada |
Stephanie | Leonardo van Dijl | Belgium | |
Still Processing | Sophy Romvari | Canada | |
Strong Son | Ian Bawa | Canada | |
Succor | Hannah Cheesman | Canada | |
Sër Bi | Moly Kane | France, Senegal | |
Tie | Elo | Alexandra Ramires | Portugal |
English title | Original title | Director(s) | Production country |
---|---|---|---|
Get the Hell Out | Tao Chu Li Fa Yuan | I-Fan Wang | Taiwan |
Shadow in the Cloud | Roseanne Liang | New Zealand, United States | |
Violation | Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli | Canada |
English title | Original title | Director(s) | Production country |
---|---|---|---|
40 Years a Prisoner | Tommy Oliver | United States | |
Akilla's Escape | Charles Officer | Canada, United States | |
Downstream to Kinshasa | En route pour le milliard | Dieudo Hamadi | DR Congo |
The Way I See It | Dawn Porter | United States |
English title | Original title | Director(s) | Production country |
---|---|---|---|
A Suitable Boy | Mira Nair | United Kingdom | |
The Third Day | Felix Barrett, Dennis Kelly | United Kingdom, United States | |
Trickster | Michelle Latimer | Canada |
English title | Original title | Director(s) | Production country |
---|---|---|---|
Fauna | Flora y fauna | Nicolás Pereda | Canada, Mexico |
The Inheritance | Ephraim Asili | United States |
English title | Original title | Director(s) | Production country |
---|---|---|---|
The Boy from Medellin | Matthew Heineman | United States, Colombia | |
The Truffle Hunters | Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw | Greece, Italy, United States | |
Underplayed also featuring live DJ set by Rezz | Stacey Lee | Canada | |
The Water Man | David Oyelowo | United States | |
Wolfwalkers | Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart | Ireland, Luxembourg, France |
The Industry Selects program was a 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 following films were screened, they were available on the festival's industry platform, but not on the commercial platform for the general public. [9] Introduced at the time as a temporary measure due to the pandemic, [26] 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. [27]
English title | Original title | Director(s) | Production country |
---|---|---|---|
After Love | Aleem Khan | France, United Kingdom | |
And Tomorrow the Entire World | Und morgen die ganze Welt | Julia Von Heinz | France, Germany |
Apples | Μήλα | Christos Nikou | Greece, Poland, Slovenia |
Baby Done | Curtis Vowell | New Zealand | |
Enforcement | Shorta | Anders Ølholm, Frederik Louis Hviid | Denmark |
Falling for Figaro | Ben Lewin | Australia, United Kingdom | |
The Garden | Gullregn | Ragnar Bragason | Iceland, Poland |
A Good Man | Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar | France | |
Here We Are | הנה אנחנו | Nir Bergman | Israel, Italy |
Holler | Nicole Riegel | United States | |
In Between Dying | Səpələnmiş ölümlər arasında | Hilal Baydarov | Azerbaijan, Mexico, United States |
Karnawal | Juan Pablo Félix | Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Norway | |
The Kid Detective | Evan Morgan | Canada | |
Kill It and Leave This Town | Zabij to i wyjedź z tego miasta | Mariusz Wilczyński | Poland |
La Verónica | Leonardo Medel | Chile | |
Like a House on Fire | Jesse Klein | Canada | |
Lovers | Amants | Nicole Garcia | France |
Magic Mountains | Urszula Antoniak | Netherlands | |
Monday | Argyris Papadimitropoulos | Greece, United Kingdom, United States | |
The Monopoly of Violence | David Dufresne | France | |
My Best Part | Garçon chiffon | Nicolas Maury | France |
My Heart Goes Boom! | Explota Explota | Nacho Álvarez | Spain |
My Name Is Francesco Totti | Alex Infascelli | Italy | |
Saint-Narcisse | Bruce LaBruce | Canada | |
Should the Wind Drop | Si le vent tombe | Nora Martirosyan | Armenia, Belgium, France |
Simple Passion | Passion simple | Danielle Arbid | Belgium, France |
Sweat | Magnus von Horn | Poland, Sweden | |
The Ties | Lacci | Daniele Luchetti | Italy |
Tove | Zaida Bergroth | Finland | |
The Translator | Le Traducteur | Rana Kazkaz, Anas Khalaf | France, Switzerland, Syria, Belgium, Qatar, United States |
TIFF's annual Canada's Top Ten list, its national critics and festival programmers poll of the ten best feature and short films of the year, was released on December 9, 2020. [28]
The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the most prestigious and largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, founded in 1976 and taking place each September. It is also a permanent destination for film culture operating out of the TIFF Lightbox cultural centre, located in Downtown Toronto.
The Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Film is an annual juried film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to a film judged to be the best Canadian feature film.
The Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Short Film, formerly also known as the NFB John Spotton Award, is an annual film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to a film judged to be the best Canadian short film of the festival. As of 2017, the award is sponsored by International Watch Company and known as the "IWC Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Short Film".
The Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award is an annual film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to the film rated as the year's most popular film with festival audiences. Past sponsors of the award have included Cadillac and Grolsch.
The Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award for Documentaries is an annual film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to the film rated as the year's most popular documentary film with festival audiences. The award was first introduced in 2009; prior to its introduction, documentary films were eligible for the Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award.
The Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award for Midnight Madness is an annual film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to the film rated as the year's most popular film in the festival's "Midnight Madness" stream of underground and cult films. The award was first introduced in 2009.
Benjamin, Benny, Ben is a Canadian short drama film, directed by Paul Shkordoff and released in 2020. The film stars Anwar Haj as Benjamin, a Black Canadian man on his way to a job interview, whose preparations are threatened when he trips and falls along the way.
Dustin is a French short drama film, directed by Naïla Guiguet and released in 2020. The film stars Dustin Muchuvitz as Dustin, a trans woman attending a rave with her boyfriend Félix.
Tiffany Hsiung is a Canadian documentary filmmaker. She is most noted for her 2016 documentary film The Apology, which won a Peabody Award in 2019, and her 2020 short documentary film Sing Me a Lullaby, which won the Share Her Journey award at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, and the Canadian Screen Award for Best Short Documentary at the 9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021.
Black Bodies is a 2020 Canadian short film, directed by Kelly Fyffe-Marshall, and produced by Tamar Bird and Sasha Leigh Henry. Inspired by a real-life incident when Fyffe-Marshall, Komi Olaf and Donisha Prendergast were travelling in California, and a woman in the neighbourhood called the police on them because she wrongly believed they were burglarizing their Airbnb rental, the film features Olaf and Prendergast performing spoken word pieces about the trauma of being victimized by anti-Black racism.
Kelly Fyffe-Marshall is a Canadian filmmaker best known for her 2020 two-part short film Black Bodies, which won the Changemaker Award at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, and won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Live Action Short Drama at the 9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021.
The Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best International Short Film is an annual film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to a film judged to be the best short film by an international filmmaker at the festival. The award was presented for the first time in 2014.
Sing Me a Lullaby is a Canadian short documentary film, directed by Tiffany Hsiung and released in 2020. The film documents Hsiung's efforts to locate and reconnect with her mother's birth family in Taiwan, following her mother's separation from her parents and adoption in childhood.
Paul Shkordoff is a Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter from Toronto, Ontario. He is most noted for his 2020 short film Benjamin, Benny, Ben, which won the award for the award for Best Canadian Short Film at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival and was a Canadian Screen Award nominee for Best Live Action Short Drama at the 9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021.
The Toronto International Film Festival NETPAC Prize is an annual film award, presented by the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema to honour the best film from the Asia-Pacific region screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. The award was presented for the first time in 2012.
The 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, the 46th event in the Toronto International Film Festival series, was held from September 9 to 18, 2021. Due to the continued COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto, the festival was staged as a "hybrid" of in-person and digital screenings. Most films were screened both in-person and on the digital platform, although a few titles were withheld by their distributors from the digital platform and instead were screened exclusively in-person.
The Changemaker Award is an annual film award presented by the Toronto International Film Festival in conjunction with the Shawn Mendes Foundation. First presented at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, the award is presented to honour films with a strong social message, with the winner selected by the organizing committee for the TIFF Next Wave youth film festival.
Share Her Journey is a Canadian film program, created by the Toronto International Film Festival to foster the career development and advancement of women in the film industry.
The 47th annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from September 8 to 18, 2022.
The TIFF Tribute Awards are an annual award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to honour distinguished achievements in filmmaking. Unlike the festival's regular awards, which are presented based on audience or jury voting during the festival, the TIFF Tribute Awards are presented to people or organizations selected by the board and announced in advance of the festival. Recipients are selected from among the cast and crew of the films in that year's festival lineup.