The Buyer's Choice: TIFF 2024
TIFF's People's Choice Award winner represents the festival's attempts to balance public and industry appeal
Partway through this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, a surprising piece of news emerged through the grapevine. Unlike Berlin, Cannes, and Venice, aka the “big three” international film fests, TIFF’s main prize isn’t awarded by a jury of filmmakers and celebrities. Since Toronto focuses more on the public than the film industry, festival audiences vote for the People’s Choice Award. The award has been commonly seen as a predictor of what will end up as a nominee at the Academy Awards, to the point where the award’s Wikipedia page has a column listing Oscar nominations/wins.
Despite the last twelve winners receiving nominations or awards for Best Picture, the early word this year was that Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck, a Stephen King adaptation with no distributor let alone any talk of awards buzz, was this year’s People’s Choice Award frontrunner. The other two titles rumoured to take the top prize, Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner Anora and Jacques Audiard’s Cannes Jury Prize winner Emilia Pérez, fell more in line with expectations.
While unintentional, the three frontrunners pointed to the festival’s ongoing identity crisis associated with current TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey. Back in 2014, TIFF made the decision that only World Premieres and North American Premieres would screen in the festival’s opening days, while titles with “lesser” premiere statuses would screen later on. It was a response to the rise of social media and the Telluride Film Festival, a small event in Colorado known for its popularity with Oscar voters and its intimate, insular setting (the fest’s most popular pass cost $780 in 2024, and I can only assume accommodations aren’t cheap). The small, mostly industry setting allowed Telluride to hold “surprise screenings” for titles that would have their official premieres at TIFF or other festivals later on. But in 2013, when press and attendees at Telluride rushed online to rave about the surprise screening of Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, it stole the thunder TIFF expected from their “World Premiere” several days later. The accessibility of real-time reactions from around the world meant no more room for surprises.
At the time, TIFF’s decision around premieres was an aggressive, exclusionary move from a festival known for its more passive, inviting nature. TIFF launched as a “festival of festivals” in the 1970s, so showcasing titles that premiered elsewhere is part of its DNA. Why would they get so territorial against a much smaller event most of TIFF’s attendees couldn’t afford? And do audiences really care about being the first in the world or continent to watch a film? TIFF’s preference of audience over industry put it in a space adjacent to the aforementioned festivals. Now, it declared itself as a competitor.
The trend of TIFF establishing itself as a premiere event alongside other major festivals has continued over the years under Bailey’s leadership as artistic director and CEO. Take a look at the festival’s announcements and press releases in the months and weeks leading up to the festival and you’ll see an emphasis on World Premieres; in recent years, the first films announced for the festival are world firsts; and TIFF’s competitive programme Platform switched from a mix of premiere statuses to exclusively World Premieres. These are just a few of the ways the festival rebranded itself to put more of an emphasis on being first over the last decade.
Strategically, the festival may have no choice but to pursue this route as a means of survival. In 2010, TIFF opened the Lightbox, its year-round, permanent headquarters in Toronto’s Entertainment District. The building opened with five cinemas and a large space for film-related exhibitions. In the years since, the exhibition space went away, the organization went through multiple rounds of layoffs, and in 2023 the festival’s long-time sponsor Bell dropped them, making the building change its name from TIFF Bell Lightbox to just TIFF Lightbox. Earlier this year, a former programmer described the building as a “money pit” and there’s been no shortage of complaints about TIFF’s steep festival ticket prices online. Being first might seem irrelevant to an average cinephile or festgoer, but it’s a lot more important to a non-profit that has to pay their bills.
It doesn’t help that TIFF, like every arts institution over the past several years, faced an existential threat from the ongoing pandemic that shut down most of their operations for almost two years. Making matters worse for them were the dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023, meaning a lack of talent attending and studios willing to screen their upcoming titles. What became obvious across these tumultuous years was that TIFF’s usual lifelines of glamour and prestige to lure in audiences and corporate sponsors were not as reliable as they once were. There had to be a new strategy.
All of this brings us back to 2024, where TIFF rallied hard to emerge in a new, fully recovered state. After losing Bell as a sponsor, the festival announced new Festival Presenting Sponsor Rogers along with a slew of other partnerships. More important was a piece of news announced months earlier: a $23 million investment from Canada’s federal government to help TIFF launch a “content market” in 2026. This puts TIFF in line with Berlin, which hosts the European Film Market alongside the Berlinale, and Cannes’ Marché du film.
When I heard that the People’s Choice Award might come down to either a World Premiere acquisition title or a Cannes favourite/Oscars frontrunner, I guessed that the former would win out. Part of my guess had to do with attending the premiere and seeing the energy in the room firsthand. But of these two competing narratives, one of TIFF establishing a new film rather than validating a film that doesn’t need the win, The Life of Chuck happily aligned with the festival’s current and future plans. Here’s a title that TIFF could tout as a shining example of why a market represents a natural evolution for them, and if the audience happened to be on the same page, that’s all the better. On the festival’s final day, The Life of Chuck was announced as the People’s Choice Award winner, while Emilia Pérez and Anora came in second and third. Just over a week later, Neon acquired The Life of Chuck for a release in Summer 2025.
This doesn’t mean TIFF will abandon its status as one of the main kickoffs for various awards campaigns. While Venice still positions itself as the prime platform for Hollywood to unveil its Oscars bait, Cannes continues to develop its higher profile status in Hollywood, and Berlin flounders as it tries to catch up to them, TIFF’s tactic of expanding its industry side looks like a large scale effort to adapt and survive as it begins to prepare for its 50th edition in 2025.
The expansion means extra opportunities to bolster TIFF’s reputation and status in the festival circuit, as well as more ways to make money and stay afloat. It also represents a realization of where TIFF has been heading for some time now, as industry demands encroach on a space once dominated by public appeal. How TIFF will manage that balance in the coming years remains to be seen, but I hope they own what they’re evolving into rather than try to keep up old appearances. What was once known as the “people’s festival” is no more, although locals and frequent festivalgoers have known this for a while. Until TIFF makes clear what it is, what kind of space it wants to create, and where it draws lines within that space, it will continue to exist in its current, ambiguous, and expensive form: a festival for both the industry and people who can afford it.