If you love movies - and if you're reading this, I bet you do - you must be excited for today's start of the 46th Toronto International Film Festival, or TIFF 2021.
TIFF is one of the biggest cultural events in the Greater Toronto Area, with hundreds of thousands of local attendees. And like last year, there are numerous events (hundreds, in fact) that you can safely watch from home in Oakville and around Halton Region.
After 18 months of scaled-down, adjusted, postponed and even cancelled cultural events, TIFF still has some stipulations to both the in-person and digital offerings this year. But for lovers of film, cinema, and all forms of art, this festival is paradise.
Want to participate? Oakville News has you covered, navigating the different kinds of events and more than 150 titles programmed this year. Even if you've never been before or watched a movie from TIFF, it's a lot of fun.
(Oakville too has an excellent film festival and year-round series with OFFA, but you can't compare to TIFF when it comes to size and variety.)
The festival runs ten days this year from Thursday, September 9 (today) until next Saturday the 18th. Here's our now annual guide to all the excitement for the 2021 festival:
1. How to watch movies at home
This the way a majority of attendees will see their films this year - including most people in Oakville. It's called Digital TIFF Bell Lightbox - a website and app where anyone across Canada (and some other countries for the next ten days only) can rent movies featured during this year's festival.
Here’s how it works: You buy a ticket to a film online (between $19-26 per film), which will become available on a certain day and time during the festival. You (and however many fellow cinephiles you can cram into your living room) will then have a four hour window to start and finish watching the movie.
Almost all films with TIFF's digital platform are then viewable like most films from another streaming service would be. Open the app, sign in, and the movies you've purchased online will be available there to watch once the "showtime" begins. There's lots of great choices, and of the 150+ movies available, only two are sold out as of this publication.
The system is well-designed and easy to navigate, and is available for all screens in Canada, but what makes this special from renting any old movie is dozens of these titles are literal world premieres. Part of the fun also comes in setting up your living room, TV room, bedrooms, basements or backyards for your very special movie night.
You can see the full selection of movies available and rent films to see during TIFF online here.
2. How to attend events in-person
For the best (and more traditional) film festival experience, there are hundreds of socially distanced showtimes in Toronto over the next ten days, with almost all of them still having seats available. The kinds of in-person shows include:
- Premium gala events at the Princess of Wales Theatre, Roy Thomson Hall and the Cinesphere
- Indoor cinema screenings at the Scotiabank Theatre and TIFF Bell Lightbox
- Drive-In screenings at Ontario Place
- Ontario Place's West Island open-air theatre, like a movie ampitheatre build especially for TIFF
Tickets for all events range from $19-40 per person, with all taxes and fees included. Help on ticketing for 2021 is available here.
If you do decide to attend an in-person event, there are some special rules for all attendees, including mandatory mask wearing and all tickets being 100% digital or mobile.
While Ontario won't begin mandating vaccinations for non-essential businesses for another two weeks, TIFF has said in advance they're starting today - all guests at TIFF must provide proof of vaccination OR a negative COVID-19 test from the last 72 hours before entering any theatre.
TIFF has also released a helpful video for anyone wanting to see or rent a show this week:
3. How to experience free events
You don't have to pay to enjoy TIFF! There are online interviews, talks, meet and greets, and broadcast panels about movies for free every day on TIFF's many social media platforms.
One of the film programs this year, called Celebrating Alanis Obomsawin, is about Canadian filmmaker and documentarian Alanis Obomsawin who's spent more than 50 years focusing her work on Indigenous life in Canada. This year, several of her films are featured as a retrospective at TIFF, and all the movies are free. You can see and learn more at this link.
There's also a program for Bell and Crave subscribers called TIFF Rewind, with free screenings on Crave of past TIFF movies celebrating anniversaries this year. These also include interviews with the actors and directors - some events include Catharine O'Hara and Eugene Levy for Best in Show and Antoine Fuqua for Training Day.
Besides the hundreds of film screenings scheduled over the next ten days, TIFF also has talks, panels, masterclasses, and streamed online event featuring a team of TIFF Ambassadors, many of whom appear virtually in scheduled events. Learn more about these initiatives and events here.
4. How to read about the movies
This is where your favourite Oakville News critic and arts reporter (me - Tyler) comes in handy. After last year's project of watching every single movie at TIFF (which, after nine days and 57 films, I successfully did) it's just not possible to do with 100+ features and 45 shorts.
But how should you decide what's the best thing to see? Oakville News will be publishing at least one review every day of the festival to highlight some of the buzziest and most star-studded films this year. This way you can see what the biggest and best films are this year, and how you can watch them both during the festival and over the coming weeks as they're released to the general public.
For a list of reviews on most of the films at this year's festival, see all Tyler Collins' TIFF reviews online here. Here are some of Tyler's picks, all with tickets still available in-person, with the Digital Cinema or both:
- The Eyes of Tammy Faye (Special Presentations)
- Flee (TIFF Docs)
- The Good House (Gala Presentations)
- The Guilty (Special Presentations)
- The Humans (Special Presentations)
- Montana Story (Platform)
- Night Raiders (Gala Presentations)
- Neptune Frost (Wavelengths)
- The Power of the Dog (Special Presentations)
- The Rescue (TIFF Docs)
- Scarborough (Discovery)
- Titane (Midnight Madness)
- Wildhood (Discovery)
- The Worst Person in the World (Gala Presentations)
Lastly, a full guide with detailed information about venues, prices, schedules, tech support and film availability is on TIFF's thorough and extensive website here.
Whether you decide to see one movie or one hundred, there's no bad way to enjoy the live and virtual offerings of the festival. It's a great celebration of art and culture in the Greater Toronto Area, and we hope you make some time in the next week and a half to be part of it!