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".
Sarah Ellen Polley is a Canadian filmmaker, political activist and retired actress. She first garnered attention as a child actress for her role as Ramona Quimby in the television series Ramona, based on Beverly Cleary's books. Subsequently this led to her role as Sara Stanley in the Canadian television series Road to Avonlea (1990–1996). She has starred in many feature films, including The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), Exotica (1994), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Guinevere (1999), Go (1999), The Weight of Water (2000), No Such Thing (2001), My Life Without Me (2003), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Splice (2009), and Mr. Nobody (2009).
Mina Shum is an independent Canadian filmmaker. She is a writer and director of award-winning feature films, numerous shorts and has created site specific installations and theatre. Her features, Double Happiness and Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity both premiered in the US at the Sundance Film Festival and Double Happiness won the Wolfgang Staudte Prize for Best First Feature at the Berlin Film Festival and the Audience Award at Torino. She was director resident at the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto. She was also a member of an alternative rock band called Playdoh Republic.
Michelle Latimer is a Canadian actress, director, writer, and filmmaker. She initially rose to prominence for her role as Trish Simkin on the television series Paradise Falls, shown nationally in Canada on Showcase Television (2001–2004). Since the early 2010s, she has directed several documentaries, including her feature film directorial debut, Alias (2013), and the Viceland series, Rise, which focuses on the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests; the latter won a Canadian Screen Award at the 6th annual ceremony in 2018.
Katie Boland is a Canadian actress, writer, director, and producer. She began her career as a child actress in film and television and has since branched out into adult roles, in addition to writing, directing, and producing her own projects.
Alan Zweig is a Canadian documentary filmmaker known for often using film to explore his own life.
Stories We Tell is a 2012 Canadian documentary film written and directed by Sarah Polley and produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). The film explores her family's secrets—including one intimately related to Polley's own identity. Stories We Tell premiered August 29, 2012 at the 69th Venice International Film Festival, then played at the 39th Telluride Film Festival and the 37th Toronto International Film Festival. In 2015, it was added to the Toronto International Film Festival's list of the top 10 Canadian films of all time, at number 10. It was also named the 70th greatest film since 2000 in a 2016 critics' poll by BBC.
Jordan Canning is a Canadian director for film and television. She is known for her independent feature films We Were Wolves (2014) and Suck It Up (2017), as well as her work directing on television series Baroness Von Sketch Show,Burden of Truth and Schitt's Creek.
Bacon and God's Wrath is a Canadian short documentary film, which premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. Directed by Sol Friedman and mixing animation with live action interview footage, the film centres on Razie Brownstone, a 90-year-old Jewish woman who, after undergoing a crisis of faith which has led her to reject many of the tenets of her religion, is preparing to cook and eat bacon for the first time in her life.
Johnny Ma is a Chinese-Canadian film director and screenwriter. He is best known for his debut feature film Old Stone, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2016. The film won the awards for Best Canadian First Feature Film at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, and Best First Feature at the 5th Canadian Screen Awards in 2017. His second feature To Live To Sing premiered at the Director's Fortnight Section of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
Luk'Luk'I is a Canadian drama film, which premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. The feature directorial debut of Wayne Wapeemukwa, the film is an expansion of his earlier short film Luk'Luk'I: Mother, which premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.
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.
Kathleen Hepburn is a Canadian screenwriter and film director. She first attracted acclaim for her film Never Steady, Never Still, which premiered as a short film in 2015 before being expanded into her feature film debut in 2017. The film received eight Canadian Screen Award nominations at the 6th Canadian Screen Awards in 2018, including Best Picture and a Best Original Screenplay nomination for Hepburn.
Ariane Louis-Seize is a Canadian film director and screenwriter from Quebec. She is most noted for her short films Wild Skin , which was a Canadian Screen Award nominee for Best Live Action Short Drama at the 5th Canadian Screen Awards and a Prix Iris nominee for Best Short Film at the 19th Quebec Cinema Awards, and Little Waves , which was named to the Toronto International Film Festival's annual Canada's Top Ten list in 2018.
Aisling Chin-Yee is a Canadian film director, writer, and producer, who works primarily in Montreal and Los Angeles. In addition to her work as a producer, Chin-Yee directed the films The Rest of Us (2019) and No Ordinary Man (2020).
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.
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.
Thyrone Tommy is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. His work includes the short film Mariner (2016) and the feature film Learn to Swim (2021), both of which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Ste. Anne is a Canadian experimental drama film, directed by Rhayne Vermette and released in 2021. The film stars Vermette as Renée, a Métis woman returning to her hometown in Manitoba for the first time in four years to reconnect with her family.
The 47th annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from September 8 to 18, 2022.
