FILM AND CULTURE
A Festival for the People
From scrappy to sensational, TIFF is more than a half-century old and it’s never looked better.
WORDS BY Rosemary Counter
Photography TIFF
This September, as they have for 51 years and counting, thousands of famous faces, industry insiders and devoted cinephiles will trek all over downtown Toronto for arguably the city’s hottest annual event: The Toronto International Film Festival, or TIFF as it’s more colloquially known. Recognized as one of the film industry’s most significant festivals—among its many flexes is being the launching pad for Oscar-winning classics like Chariots of Fire and The Princess Bride—the event comprises 10 days of screenings, panel discussions, red carpets and VIP-only afterparties that see the glitterati come out in droves.
Despite its early beginnings as a film outsider (Hollywood producers initially worried Canadian audiences were too conservative), TIFF gave the city of Toronto one of its first glow-ups, steadily rising to the hottest festival ticket in North America. As celebs prepare to flock to The Six once again, we’re looking back at 51 years of how TIFF came to be, what it’s done for our city’s cred and how it shaped the cultural narrative.
The Festival of Festivals
In the mid-1970s, the Canadian film industry lagged far behind its hotshot Hollywood neighbour. The National Film Board and Telefilm Canada helped, as did tax incentives from the government, but ultimately the American studios chose what people saw—or what they did not see. During a fateful lunch in Yorkville in 1973, Bill Marshall and Dusty Cohl decided those films deserved an audience, too. Marshall and Cohl were the mayor’s chief of staff and a real estate lawyer, respectively, who aspired to filmmaking—provided they had somewhere to show them.
Fast-forward three years, and with a new partner in Henk van der Kolk (and many maxed-out credit cards), the inaugural “Festival of Festivals” premiered at the Windsor Arms Hotel and the Ontario Place Cinesphere. On the bill were 127 of the best films from other international film festivals and countries, including Canada.
Photography Getty
The inaugural festival wasn’t exactly a smashing success: Marshall bragged about pulling in Jack Nicholson and Martin Scorsese, neither of whom showed up. Just days before the October 18, 1976 opening, major American studios backed out and pulled their submissions—including Bound for Glory, the festival’s opening film. Critics claimed Canada was “an extension” of the American market rather than its own, and Toronto audiences were “too parochial.” The Ontario Censor Board proved their point when they cracked down on a 90-second sex scene in a film curated by renowned French director Agnès Varda.
The local press wasn’t too kind, either. A headline in the Toronto Star read, “Marathon ends on a flat note,” while Bryan Johnson wrote in The Globe and Mail that the festival “featured nothing and nobody that would make headlines.”
But as it turns out, all press is good press, and the festival sold close to 80 per cent of its tickets (at $6 for three screenings), giving organizers a compelling reason to do it again the following year.
↑ A Decade of Growth Festival director Wayne Clarkson and chairman Colin Watson present a framed poster to Ontario’s citizenship and culture minister, Lily Munro, at the festival’s 10th anniversary press conference in 1985.
From Poison to Pixie Dust In its second go-around, the festival drew names like Liza Minnelli, Peter O’Toole and Henry Winkler. And so with the major studios back on the guest list, its next big hurdle was censorship. The Ontario Censor Board demanded to see and edit all films in advance, banning some—like Louis Malle’s still-controversial Pretty Baby starring a preteen Brooke Shields—and editing others, like the provocative In Praise of Older Women, produced by Robert Lantos. Since both Lantos and Marshall disagreed with the Board’s strict standards, they swapped the reels on opening night, screening the original version in full. Meanwhile, packed theatres proved money was to be made, and American producers immediately changed their perspective. Previously the home of Euro art films and “box office poison,” as former TIFF CEO and executive director Piers Handling once said to the National Post, the festival became a testing ground that sussed out hits. Chariots of Fire (1981), The Big Chill (1983) and Dead Ringers (1988) were just a few classics that premiered in Toronto.
As the festival and its reach grew, organizers crunched the numbers to arrive at an impressive stat: by 1993, the festival was bringing $30 million annually to the city. Suddenly Toronto had some money to spend.
The Ontario Censor Board demanded to see and edit all films in advance, banning some—like Louis Malle’s still-controversial Pretty Baby starring a preteen Brooke Shields
↑ From Above French actress Jeanne Moreau, 1976; Stephen Young, Celine Lomez and Donald Sutherland add star power to the second edition of the festival, 1977; Karen Black and her husband, Kit Carson, at the Elgin movie theatre, 1978.
Photography Lomez/Sutherland: Canadian Press; Getty
TIFF Times
From surprise celebrity bartending to made-to-order seating, here are some of TIFF’s more noteworthy moments.
1.
In 1987, to ensure The Princess Bride star André the Giant had plenty of legroom at his film’s closing night premiere, organizers built a custom chair to fit the seven-foot-four, 500-pound actor’s impressive frame.
2.
In 1996, the newspapers went wild when a private jet delivered Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Anjelica Huston, Demi Moore, Tom Hanks and Cher in one epic entourage.
3.
In 2009, Drew Barrymore ditched the afterparty for her directorial debut, Whip It, to serve up drinks at dive bar Sweaty Betty’s on Ossington.
4.
In 2007, supposed bad boy Colin Farrell won hearts by buying a whole new wardrobe for a homeless man during a surprise shopping spree in Yorkville.
The People’s Choice The mid-1990s in Toronto was an exciting time. In the relatively new SkyDome, the Blue Jays won back-to-back World Series titles, the Toronto Raptors were founded, and MuchMusic’s Electric Circus catapulted Toronto’s club and music scene, giving birth to legends like Maestro Fresh Wes. As immigration soared and the “Mega City” boomed, so too did the Festival of Festivals, whose moniker unfortunately didn’t include the crucial words “Toronto” or “film.” In 1994, that was rectified with a new name, The Toronto International Film Festival, to reflect an increasingly cosmopolitan and multicultural population.
A handful of TIFF films were previously noticed by the Academy, but the late ’90s saw an almost uncanny streak of TIFF “People’s Choice Award” winners-turned-surprise Oscar wins. Thanks to Toronto moviegoers, Shine (1996) and Life is Beautiful (1998) scored unlikely best picture nods, while American Beauty won in 1999. A year later, Torontonians chose Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which went on to win best foreign language film.
Not unlike the city itself, TIFF became the place to be if you wanted to be seen and discovered. And if you wanted to win an Oscar, TIFF’s People’s Choice Award became a widely known stepping stone to Hollywood’s coveted golden statue.
Chill City As big as TIFF became, Toronto is not Los Angeles and actors loved that. Part of the festival’s appeal for celebrities was 10 days in a city where the likes of Adam Sandler, Natalie Portman or Olivia Wilde could eat lunch al fresco in relative peace. Though surely as starstruck as anyone else, Torontonians were mostly invested in their hard-earned reputation as nice, good and, perhaps most importantly, polite.
“We’re still nice, of course, but in a time before iPhones and Instagram, Toronto was a really chill place where celebrities would come and stay the whole week,” remembers Natasha Koifman, president and founder of NKPR, a PR and marketing agency based in Toronto. She’s partnered and collaborated with TIFF on studio events, photo shoots and premieres for more than 25 years, and remembers the more laidback aughts fondly.
“Famous people would go to different parties and restaurants; they’d casually walk around the streets,” she says. “I remember seeing Vince Vaughn at different events for three or four days straight.”
Just as the stars filled our city, Torontonians filled their theatres. “Unlike Cannes, which is very industry-specific, TIFF is so special because it’s the people’s festival,” explains Koifman. Anyone can buy a ticket and anyone can cast their vote for the winning film—no expertise, connections or clout required.
← Left Cher and Demi Moore attend the Toronto International Film Festival, September 12, 1996.
Photography Canadian Press
Below The world premiere of Roofman, starring Kirsten Dunst and Channing Tatum, drew a sizable crowd to the Roy Thompson Hall red carpet during the 50th edition of TIFF, September 6, 2025.
↓
The Lightbox Moment Starting around 2000, TIFF brains started to brainstorm about their year-round presence in the city. Voracious fans wanted more than a few days in September, and organizers needed an upgrade from rental spaces to a permanent HQ to host screenings, parties, exhibitions and networking events for would-be filmmakers. Since the festival is a not-for-profit organization, it partnered with Bell to make TIFF’s dream come true: a nearly $200 million cultural centre on the bustling corner of King Street West and John Street called TIFF Lightbox boasting five theatres, two restaurants, a rooftop terrace and a gift shop. Torontonians filled the streets to witness the ribbon-cutting ceremony in September 2010. Its opening was symbolic of TIFF’s huge—and permanent—presence in the city.
“Even though TIFF was always an international festival, the Lightbox really changed the festival’s vibe from kind of local to very global,” Koifman says. “That was the moment, I think, when we really felt the magnitude of what the festival had become.”
Economically, TIFF brings in some $240 million to the city’s annual economy today. Professionally, it elevated Canada’s film industry from American afterthought to formidable multibillion-dollar powerhouse. Culturally, it’s become a prestigious event attracting visitors from around the globe—and loyal locals who’ve welcomed TIFF to Toronto for half a century, and counting.
Photography TIFF
@heapsestrin | Privacy Policy | Sitemap
© 2026 Heaps Estrin Real Estate Team
Photography TIFF
This September, as they have for 51 years and counting, thousands of famous faces, industry insiders and devoted cinephiles will trek all over downtown Toronto for arguably the city’s hottest annual event: The Toronto International Film Festival, or TIFF as it’s more colloquially known. Recognized as one of the film industry’s most significant festivals—among its many flexes is being the launching pad for Oscar-winning classics like Chariots of Fire and The Princess Bride—the event comprises 10 days of screenings, panel discussions, red carpets and VIP-only afterparties that see the glitterati come out in droves.
Despite its early beginnings as a film outsider (Hollywood producers initially worried Canadian audiences were too conservative), TIFF gave the city of Toronto one of its first glow-ups, steadily rising to the hottest festival ticket in North America. As celebs prepare to flock to The Six once again, we’re looking back at 51 years of how TIFF came to be, what it’s done for our city’s cred and how it shaped the cultural narrative.
The Festival of Festivals
In the mid-1970s, the Canadian film industry lagged far behind its hotshot Hollywood neighbour. The National Film Board and Telefilm Canada helped, as did tax incentives from the government, but ultimately the American studios chose what people saw—or what they did not see. During a fateful lunch in Yorkville in 1973, Bill Marshall and Dusty Cohl decided those films deserved an audience, too. Marshall and Cohl were the mayor’s chief of staff and a real estate lawyer, respectively, who aspired to filmmaking—provided they had somewhere to show them.
Fast-forward three years, and with a new partner in Henk van der Kolk (and many maxed-out credit cards), the inaugural “Festival of Festivals” premiered at the Windsor Arms Hotel and the Ontario Place Cinesphere. On the bill were 127 of the best films from other international film festivals and countries, including Canada.
The inaugural festival wasn’t exactly a smashing success: Marshall bragged about pulling in Jack Nicholson and Martin Scorsese, neither of whom showed up. Just days before the October 18, 1976 opening, major American studios backed out and pulled their submissions—including Bound for Glory, the festival’s opening film. Critics claimed Canada was “an extension” of the American market rather than its own, and Toronto audiences were “too parochial.” The Ontario Censor Board proved their point when they cracked down on a 90-second sex scene in a film curated by renowned French director Agnès Varda.
The local press wasn’t too kind, either. A headline in the Toronto Star read, “Marathon ends on a flat note,” while Bryan Johnson wrote in The Globe and Mail that the festival “featured nothing and nobody that would make headlines.”
But as it turns out, all press is good press, and the festival sold close to 80 per cent of its tickets (at $6 for three screenings), giving organizers a compelling reason to do it again the following year.
A Decade of Growth Festival director Wayne Clarkson and chairman Colin Watson present a framed poster to Ontario’s citizenship and culture minister, Lily Munro, at the festival’s 10th anniversary press conference in 1985.
↓
From Poison to Pixie Dust In its second go-around, the festival drew names like Liza Minnelli, Peter O’Toole and Henry Winkler. And so with the major studios back on the guest list, its next big hurdle was censorship. The Ontario Censor Board demanded to see and edit all films in advance, banning some—like Louis Malle’s still-controversial Pretty Baby starring a preteen Brooke Shields—and editing others, like the provocative In Praise of Older Women, produced by Robert Lantos. Since both Lantos and Marshall disagreed with the Board’s strict standards, they swapped the reels on opening night, screening the original version in full. Meanwhile, packed theatres proved money was to be made, and American producers immediately changed their perspective. Previously the home of Euro art films and “box office poison,” as former TIFF CEO and executive director Piers Handling once said to the National Post, the festival became a testing ground that sussed out hits. Chariots of Fire (1981), The Big Chill (1983) and Dead Ringers (1988) were just a few classics that premiered in Toronto.
As the festival and its reach grew, organizers crunched the numbers to arrive at an impressive stat: by 1993, the festival was bringing $30 million annually to the city. Suddenly Toronto had some money to spend.
The Ontario Censor Board demanded to see and edit all films in advance, banning some—like Louis Malle’s still-controversial Pretty Baby starring a preteen Brooke Shields
Photography Lomez/Sutherland: Canadian Press; Getty
↑ Above French actress Jeanne Moreau, 1976; Stephen Young, Celine Lomez and Donald Sutherland add star power to the second edition of the festival, 1977; Karen Black and her husband, Kit Carson, at the Elgin movie theatre, 1978.
The People’s Choice The mid-1990s in Toronto was an exciting time. In the relatively new SkyDome, the Blue Jays won back-to-back World Series titles, the Toronto Raptors were founded, and MuchMusic’s Electric Circus catapulted Toronto’s club and music scene, giving birth to legends like Maestro Fresh Wes. As immigration soared and the “Mega City” boomed, so too did the Festival of Festivals, whose moniker unfortunately didn’t include the crucial words “Toronto” or “film.” In 1994, that was rectified with a new name, The Toronto International Film Festival, to reflect an increasingly cosmopolitan and multicultural population.
A handful of TIFF films were previously noticed by the Academy, but the late ’90s saw an almost uncanny streak of TIFF “People’s Choice Award” winners-turned-surprise Oscar wins. Thanks to Toronto moviegoers, Shine (1996) and Life is Beautiful (1998) scored unlikely best picture nods, while American Beauty won in 1999. A year later, Torontonians chose Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which went on to win best foreign language film.
Not unlike the city itself, TIFF became the place to be if you wanted to be seen and discovered. And if you wanted to win an Oscar, TIFF’s People’s Choice Award became a widely known stepping stone to Hollywood’s coveted golden statue.
TIFF Times
From surprise celebrity bartending to made-to-order seating, here are some of TIFF’s more noteworthy moments.
1.
In 1987, to ensure The Princess Bride star André the Giant had plenty of legroom at his film’s closing night premiere, organizers built a custom chair to fit the seven-foot-four, 500-pound actor’s impressive frame.
2.
In 1996, the newspapers went wild when a private jet delivered Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Anjelica Huston, Demi Moore, Tom Hanks and Cher in one epic entourage.
3.
In 2009, Drew Barrymore ditched the afterparty for her directorial debut, Whip It, to serve up drinks at dive bar Sweaty Betty’s on Ossington.
4.
In 2007, supposed bad boy Colin Farrell won hearts by buying a whole new wardrobe for a homeless man during a surprise shopping spree in Yorkville.
Chill City As big as TIFF became, Toronto is not Los Angeles and actors loved that. Part of the festival’s appeal for celebrities was 10 days in a city where the likes of Adam Sandler, Natalie Portman or Olivia Wilde could eat lunch al fresco in relative peace. Though surely as starstruck as anyone else, Torontonians were mostly invested in their hard-earned reputation as nice, good and, perhaps most importantly, polite.
“We’re still nice, of course, but in a time before iPhones and Instagram, Toronto was a really chill place where celebrities would come and stay the whole week,” remembers Natasha Koifman, president and founder of NKPR, a PR and marketing agency based in Toronto. She’s partnered and collaborated with TIFF on studio events, photo shoots and premieres for more than 25 years, and remembers the more laidback aughts fondly.
“Famous people would go to different parties and restaurants; they’d casually walk around the streets,” she says. “I remember seeing Vince Vaughn at different events for three or four days straight.”
Just as the stars filled our city, Torontonians filled their theatres. “Unlike Cannes, which is very industry-specific, TIFF is so special because it’s the people’s festival,” explains Koifman. Anyone can buy a ticket and anyone can cast their vote for the winning film—no expertise, connections or clout required.
Photography Canadian Press
↑ Above Cher and Demi Moore attend the Toronto International Film Festival, September 12, 1996.
The Lightbox Moment Starting around 2000, TIFF brains started to brainstorm about their year-round presence in the city. Voracious fans wanted more than a few days in September, and organizers needed an upgrade from rental spaces to a permanent HQ to host screenings, parties, exhibitions and networking events for would-be filmmakers. Since the festival is a not-for-profit organization, it partnered with Bell to make TIFF’s dream come true: a nearly $200 million cultural centre on the bustling corner of King Street West and John Street called TIFF Lightbox boasting five theatres, two restaurants, a rooftop terrace and a gift shop. Torontonians filled the streets to witness the ribbon-cutting ceremony in September 2010. Its opening was symbolic of TIFF’s huge—and permanent—presence in the city.
“Even though TIFF was always an international festival, the Lightbox really changed the festival’s vibe from kind of local to very global,” Koifman says. “That was the moment, I think, when we really felt the magnitude of what the festival had become.”
Economically, TIFF brings in some $240 million to the city’s annual economy today. Professionally, it elevated Canada’s film industry from American afterthought to formidable multibillion-dollar powerhouse. Culturally, it’s become a prestigious event attracting visitors from around the globe—and loyal locals who’ve welcomed TIFF to Toronto for half a century, and counting.
Below The world premiere of Roofman, starring Kirsten Dunst and Channing Tatum, drew a sizable crowd to the Roy Thompson Hall red carpet during the 50th edition of TIFF, September 6, 2025.
↓
@heapsestrin | Privacy Policy | Sitemap
© 2026 Heaps Estrin Real Estate Team
@heapsestrin | Privacy Policy | Sitemap
© 2026 Heaps Estrin Real Estate Team