Baby Clyde's TIFF Diary #1: "Bros" First!

Editor's Note: We will have some reviews at TIFF from Abe and Matt. Meanwhile Baby Clyde will be offering daily diaries. Hope you enjoy!

En route to TIFF!It’s a long-accepted fact in my office that for the first two weeks of September I will be away. No phone calls. No emails. No invoices. I’ll be travelling to Canada to spend 10 days in dark theatres watching the newest Oscar Bait all by myself and doing my very best to avoid speaking to anyone else whilst I’m there. Only this time I'm skipping the last bit as I'll be taking directly to you beloved readers. Nathanial has persuaded me to keep a TIFF diary to keep you abreast of all my festival adventures; He may regret it. 

So here I am back for the first time since 2019. It was of course Covid-19 that kept me away for the last couple of years, but it was only on planning this trip that I remembered the Coronavirus was nothing compared to the travails of the TIFF ticketing system...

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TIFF Lineup 2022 - Galas & Special Presentations

by Nathaniel R

Kelvin Harrison Jr stars in "Chevalier"

The Toronto International Film Festival runs September 8th through 18th this year. Of "the Big Five" festivals (the others being Berlinale, Cannes, Sundance, and Venice) Toronto doesn't have a traditional competition lineup with juries... though their audience award winners tend to get a lot of "Oscar-bound" style press. Like those other festivals they having very exciting lineups for cinephiles. If the titles showing at Venice (which happens just before it) and TIFF are as enticing as they sound, 2022 is going to explode in cinematic quality. What follows is a list of their Galas and Special Presentations though it's worth noting that TIFF usually has hundreds of movies so this is only the two most high profile programs that they've announced. 

GALA PRESENTATIONS

These are the high profile films, usually with movie stars, that are getting the full red carpet glitzy treatment. Usually they're either World Premieres or Canadian premieres of major titles that premiered in Europe...

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"Belfast" is TIFF's choice. How far can it go with Oscar?

by Nathaniel R

going to the movies in "Belfast"

It's been strange to have gone without TIFF, my once favourite festival, for two years running. As a result i have yet to see Kenneth Branagh's Belfast which did not play at Venice though its Oscar buzz is now quite loud. It recently won TIFF's People's Choice Award which has long been a strong Oscar bellwether. We'd argue that that connection is less causal than reflective of a "similar taste profile", though. The type of people who go to huge and accessible film festivals are not unlike Oscar voters in that their tastes lean mainstream but mainstream under the now niche umbrella (sigh) of "also art"...

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TIFF: Alison Pill and Sarah Gadon in ‘All My Puny Sorrows’

By Abe Friedtanzer

 

Certain feelings and states of being are entirely subjective, and that leads people to judge others based on the limited amount they’re able to perceive. Competing for the most legitimate reason to be unhappy is never a productive exercise, and yet many think that someone else can’t possibly have it as bad as them or have as much of an excuse to feel the way they do. Sadness can only be truly experienced and quantified by the one experiencing it, a concept navigated in the moving drama All My Puny Sorrows, screening in the Special Presentations section at TIFF…

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TIFF Review: Céline Sciamma’s ‘Petite Maman’

Abe is covering a few selections from the Toronto International Film Festival remotely.  

By Abe Friedtanzer 

Expectations play a big part in the experience of watching any movie. One of the major factors I consider when selecting what I’m going to see at a film festival is whether I’ve seen (and liked) the director’s previous work. I was fully intrigued by the concept of revisiting the mind of Céline Sciamma, whose last feature was Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which I think may be one of the few films that everyone at Team Experience can agree that we loved. Well, let’s start by clarifying that her follow-up, Petite Maman, couldn’t be any more different…

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