The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a permanent destination for film culture operating out of the TIFF Bell Lightbox, located in Downtown Toronto. TIFF's mission is "to transform the way people see the world through film".
Theodore Asenov Ushev is a Bulgarian animator, film director and screenwriter based in Montreal. He is best known for his work at the National Film Board of Canada, including the 2016 animated short Blind Vaysha, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He is a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France.
Heather Young is a Canadian filmmaker based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
The 39th annual Toronto International Film Festival, the 39th event in the Toronto International Film Festival series, was held in Canada from 4–14 September 2014. David Dobkin's film The Judge, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall was the opening night film. A Little Chaos, a British period drama directed by Alan Rickman and starring Kate Winslet closed the festival. More films for each section were announced on 12 August, with the line-up completed on 19 August. A total of 393 films were shown, including 143 world premieres. The first Friday was dubbed "Bill Murray Day", as festival organisers dedicated a day to the actor by screening a select number of his films for free.
The 41st annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from 8 to 18 September 2016. The first announcement of films to be screened at the festival took place on 26 July. Almost 400 films were shown.
Kazik Radwanski is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. His early short films have been cited as part of the New Canadian Cinema movement. He made his feature film directorial debut in 2012 with Tower. His second feature film, How Heavy This Hammer (2015), screened at film festivals around the world and received critical acclaim. His third feature film, Anne at 13,000 Ft. (2019), starring Deragh Campbell, won the Toronto Film Critics Association's $100,000 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award in 2021.
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".
We Forgot to Break Up is a 2017 Canadian short drama film directed by Chandler Levack. Adapted from the novel Heidegger Stairwell by Kayt Burgess, the film centres on Evan, a former rock musician reintroducing himself to his ex-bandmates for the first time since abandoning the band and coming out as a trans man.
Splinters is a Canadian drama film, directed by Thom Fitzgerald and released in 2018. An adaptation of the theatrical play by Lee-Anne Poole, the film stars Sofia Banzhaf as Belle, a woman whose relationship with her mother Nancy has been strained since she came out as lesbian, but who now faces the prospect of coming out all over again as she now identifies as bisexual and is dating Rob.
Sofia Bohdanowicz is a Canadian filmmaker. She is known for her collaborations with Deragh Campbell and made her feature film directorial debut in 2016 with Never Eat Alone. Her second feature film, Maison du Bonheur, was a finalist for the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award at the 2018 Toronto Film Critics Association Awards. That year, she won the Jay Scott Prize from the Toronto Film Critics Association. Her third feature film, MS Slavic 7, which she co-directed with Campbell, had its world premiere at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival in 2019. She has also directed several short films, such as Veslemøy's Song (2018) and Point and Line to Plane (2020).
Canada's Top Ten is an annual honour, compiled by the Toronto International Film Festival and announced in December each year to identify and promote the year's best Canadian films. The list was first introduced in 2001 as an initiative to help publicize Canadian films.
The 44th annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from 5 to 15 September 2019. The opening gala was the documentary film Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, directed by Daniel Roher, and the festival closed with a screening of the biographical film Radioactive, directed by Marjane Satrapi.
Jasmin Mozaffari is an Canadian film director and screenwriter. She won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Director at the 7th Canadian Screen Awards in 2019 for her debut feature film Firecrackers.
The Argument is a 2017 Canadian-British short experimental drama film written, directed, and edited by video artist Daniel Cockburn. The short's first half attempts to deceive the audience into thinking it is a non-fictional video essay, revealing itself mid-way to be a work of fiction, the essay actually the work of the film's protagonist, an elderly professor. Submitted as Cockburn's thesis for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Film studies at York University, the film had its world premiere at the 42nd Toronto International Film Festival, and has been warmly received by critics.
Black Conflux is a 2019 Canadian drama film directed by Nicole Dorsey. The film stars Ella Ballentine as Jackie, a teenage girl in Newfoundland and Labrador whose quest for independence leads her into the orbit of Dennis, a mentally unstable and potentially violent man in his twenties.
Deragh Campbell is a Canadian actress and filmmaker. She is known for her acclaimed performances in independent Canadian cinema. Her collaborations with filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz—Never Eat Alone (2016), Veslemøy's Song (2018), MS Slavic 7 (2019), and Point and Line to Plane (2020)—have screened at film festivals internationally. She has also featured in two of Kazik Radwanski's films, How Heavy This Hammer (2015) and Anne at 13,000 Ft. (2019), both of which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Sofia Banzhaf is a Canadian actress and filmmaker from Newfoundland and Labrador. Banzhaf was born in Germany and spent part of her early life in the United States. She is most noted for her 2019 short film I Am in the World as Free and Slender as a Deer on a Plain, which premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival and was named to TIFF's annual year-end Canada's Top Ten list for short films.
The 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, the 45th event in the Toronto International Film Festival series, was held from September 10 to 21, 2020. 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.
Beans is a 2020 Canadian drama film directed by Mohawk-Canadian filmmaker Tracey Deer. It explores the 1990 Oka Crisis at Kanesatake, which Deer lived through as a child, through the eyes of Tekehentahkhwa, a young Mohawk girl whose perspective on life is radically changed by these events.
Julie Baldassi is a Canadian film producer. She is most noted as a producer of the 2021 film Wildhood, which was a Canadian Screen Award nominee for Best Picture at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021.
