Hollywood Skipped TIFF. Toronto Did Not Wait

Joshua Rothkopf filed from Toronto after the first weekend and asked the rude question in the headline. Where’s Hollywood? The 51st edition still has stars in hotel lobbies. It does not have the old studio occupation of every night.

That is not a eulogy. The festival runs through 20 September. It opened on the 10th with a disability-rights drama and closed the calendar, months ago, on a Gilles Villeneuve biopic. In between: 293 titles, a new market floor at the convention centre, and a Platform prize that now has an Oscar door attached.

Venice still had the lion and the yacht photos. Telluride already did its secret screening circuit. Toronto this year looks like a city that booked the work and did not wait for a lot of logos to confirm the reservation.

An opening that is not a comic-book handshake

Siân Heder’s Being Heumann is the opening-night film. Ruth Madeley plays Judy Heumann. Mark Ruffalo is in it. Heder already has a CODA Oscar. Apple is on the title. That is as close as this year’s launch gets to a corporate comfort blanket, and it is still a film about a 1977 sit-in.

Etan Vlessing at The Hollywood Reporter counted the last eleven titles that pushed the slate to 293. Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine is in there. Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard is in there. Cody Fern has a film in the late add. Yan Lanouette Turgeon’s Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend is the closer, which is a Canadian racing story for a Canadian festival, not a studio tentpole that needed Toronto to start the trailer.

Last year the People’s Choice, the prize buyers still pretend is a crystal ball, went to Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet. TIFF will name this year’s winners on the last day. If you are waiting for a Marvel slot to tell you whether the festival mattered, you are reading the wrong week.

The market is a building now

IndieWire flagged the calendar furniture that is actually new. TIFF: The Market runs 10 to 16 September at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The John Bassett Theatre is on the screening list. The Tribute Awards gala was Sunday the 13th at the Fairmont Royal York, eighth edition.

Festivals have always had buyers in town. Giving them a named hall is a statement that the sales conversation is not a side effect of the red carpet. It is also a hedge. If the studios send fewer premieres, the festival still has a reason for agents to fly.

A non-English Platform winner can now qualify directly for Best International Feature at the 99th Academy Awards. That rule is not romantic. It is a pipe. Filmmakers who used to treat Platform as a critic prize can treat it as a paperwork prize. Whether the Academy’s door stays open after one cycle is a later argument. This cycle, Toronto wrote it down.

What the weekend actually screened

Rothkopf’s newsletter is not a ranking. It is a critic walking out of rooms. Jay Baruchel in The Stunt Driver, body out of a sunroof, is the image the Times put above the fold. Amy Nicholson wrote up a comedy in which a man meets the nine-year-old he did not plan for; the route is a riot even if the destination is one you have seen. The Zellner brothers brought Alpha Gang over from a Telluride world premiere: aliens in 1950s biker drag, Cate Blanchett and Chris Pine and Dave Bautista in the same frame because the movie wanted the frame to look impossible.

That is the daredevil half of the Times headline. Local pride is the other half. Baruchel is a Toronto face. The closer is Gilles Villeneuve. The festival has spent years trying not to be only a launchpad for Los Angeles. This year the pad is less crowded, so the local films are easier to see.

Courteney Cox brought a pizza-bomber thriller. Cynthia Erivo is in Prima Facie for Susanna White. Reuters also had Mahershala Ali in an action piece about faith and family. I am not going to pretend I have a full review of films I have not sat through. I am saying the names on the sidewalk were not only studio contract players killing a weekend between San Sebastian and a streaming date.

Venice spent last week arguing over a Golden Lion. Toronto spent it filling theaters that still sell regular tickets starting around thirty dollars. Those are different businesses that share a month.

Hollywood’s absence is a budget, not a vibe

Studios have been thinning festival inventories for years. A fall slot costs a campaign. A Toronto premiere used to be how you started the quotes. Now a streamer can drop a title with a QR code and a New York junket. The L.A. Times asking “where’s Hollywood” is the polite version of “who is paying for the hotel.”

The risk for Toronto is not that independent films exist. They always did. The risk is that without studio heat the national TV packages shrink, and then the market hall is a room full of people selling to each other. The counter is the Platform-to-Oscars pipe and a People’s Choice that still moves a midsize movie.

I do not know yet whether Being Heumann is the movie. I know it is a better opening statement than a franchise teaser that will play in July anyway. Herzog in the late add is the kind of booking that used to feel like clutter. This year it reads as the point.

How to watch the rest of the week

The festival still has days left. If you are in the city, the useful move is one film you cannot stream in October and one Canadian title you will not be able to find without a login from this postal code. If you are not in the city, wait for the People’s Choice and for which Platform film tries the Academy door. Do not wait for a studio to hold a party that explains the slate.

August already had a streaming list if you need a couch. TIFF is not that list. It is 293 titles in ten days, some of which will die in the market hall, some of which will show up in March with a quote from a Sunday morning in Toronto.

Rothkopf’s piece keeps returning to oddness: alien bikers, a stunt driver, a kid who should not exist in the plot until he does. That is what a festival looks like when the majors leave oxygen in the schedule. It is messier. It is also harder to confuse with a product launch.

The closer is still a racing biopic. The opener is still a sit-in. Hollywood can come back next year if it wants the photos. This year Toronto sold the seats without asking permission.

Two festivals in one week, only one of them needed yachts

Venice closed its lion conversation with Woman Unknown and a room that still photographs well. Toronto opened two days later with a sit-in picture and a market badge. The overlap is the point of September, and also the tell. If you are a studio with one fall horse, you pick the lion or you pick the streamer date. You do not automatically pick King Street.

That leaves Toronto with the films that need audiences more than they need a palace. People’s Choice still moves a midsize title because civilians vote with tickets, not with a jury statement. Hamnet proved that last year. This year the same mechanism sits on a slate that is heavier on Canadian closers and critic-bait premieres. That can produce a winner nobody in Los Angeles scheduled for, which is the only interesting outcome a festival prize still has.

The Tribute gala on the 13th is a fundraiser in a hotel ballroom. It is also where the festival reminds donors that stars still flew in. Rothkopf’s studio portraits at RBC House (Cynthia Erivo, Seth Rogen, Laura Linney) are the same reminder in daylight. Presence is not the same as a studio slate. A portrait is cheaper than a premiere.

Tickets, rush, and the films that will vanish

Regular screenings started around $30, rush a couple dollars more, premiums in the mid-forties. Members got a small pre-sale cut in late August. None of that is Cannes pricing. It is a city festival that still sells to people who take the subway. If Hollywood’s absence means more of those seats go to The Stunt Driver instead of a two-hour trailer, the civilians win.

The vanishing problem is real. Alpha Gang can live on the festival circuit for months. A late-add McDonagh will get a distributor whether Toronto exists or not. The Canadian racing closer may not. Platform films that do not win the new Oscar pipe will need a sales agent in the Bassett rooms this week, not a quote in March. That is what the market hall is for. If it works, you will see titles show up at a streamer in January with a “TIFF 2026” slug and no memory of which night they played.

I would not build an Oscar ballot off a newsletter. I would watch whether Being Heumann is treated as a campaign or as an opening-night obligation. I would watch which non-English Platform film actually files the Academy paperwork. I would watch whether Baruchel’s stunt picture finds a window or dies as a local joke.

Rothkopf kept using “daredevil” for the programming. The dare is not skydiving. The dare is filling ten days when the majors have somewhere else to be. Toronto did not wait. The rest of us can decide in March whether that was bravery or a calendar with a hole.