Photo Credit: Clare He
Everything scandalous and noteworthy about TIFF 2024.
Lizzie Federico, Contributor
After many under the radar festivals, the Toronto International Film Festival was an exciting, shocking, and loaded event for many. For the average person seeing headlines about the festival, interest lies in one thing and one thing only… the actors. Whether you’re a teenager scrolling on TikTok, or seeing daily news headlines on your office browser, the priority celebrities have on our world is indisputable. Andrew Garfield for We Live In Time, Daisy Edgar-Jones stunning on the red carpet, and Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan at the Swift Horses premier party are a few of the headline worthy stars that took Toronto by storm from September 5–15.
One of the many actors that stirred up talk was none other than Angelina Jolie, the Oscar winner 2024’s “TIFF Tribute Award in Impact Media” honouree, but not without scandal. Unexplainably, hours prior to the award ceremony Jolie’s team, via TIFF programmers, informed the media of their request for no photography or videography of her acceptance speech. This seemingly pointless request that had heads turning all over the festival was the key discussion surrounding the impact awards, taking away from the many other uncontroversial honourees. Besides the confusion surrounding Jolie’s win, Amy Adams, Cate Blanchett, and David Cronenberg numbered among the tribute award recipients, to name a few.
Beyond the drama filled actors and the superfan outlook, the true focus, the films were jam-packed and buzzworthy for months before the unrolling of the red carpet even began. Probably the buzziest of all, starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, director John Crowley’s We Live in Time is a thoughtful romance that has been a reoccurring headline grab for months, something many critics have been antsy to get their hands on. Many features this year focused on something a little less common for TIFF: music. That’s right! It was all things chorus and melodies in 2024, including documentaries about Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Paul Anka, Andrea Bocelli and more. Still on music, but more in the questionable, Robbie Williams unconventional biopic, rumoured to include a CGI monkey’s portrayal of the singer, and Pharrell Williams’s Piece by Piece, depicting his career solely through LEGO have elicited much intrigue. Many Canadian films will also feature at TIFF 2024, representing its native country fantastically with titles such as Guy Maddin’s Rumours — Canada’s official Oscar’s 2025 submission —and the Canadian-American produced The Order.
The films, however, are not without controversy of their own. A heated debate of politics and expression rights was brewing underneath the media-centric narrative of flashy biopics and CGI primates. Russians at War, Russian-Canadian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova’s documentary, elicited protest from Ukrainian officials and Ukrainian Canadian communities, amounting the film to propaganda. Initially claiming the film was “in no way” propagandist, TIFF planned to proceed with the screening; as of September 12, the day before the documentary’s premier, TIFF announced that all screenings of the film would be paused. Organisers blamed the move on “significant threats to festival operations and public safety,” whereas filmmakers have called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to investigate “this affront, from within a sovereign government, to our democratic values in a free media.” Uproars have risen from both Russian and Ukrainian sides regarding this film, likely leading to the cancellation on behalf of TIFF in an attempt to avoid unnecessary conflict while trying to bring back engagement post-Covid-19.
TIFF 2024 was an event definitely getting back on its feet, to say the least,. Who knows what jaw dropping moments 2025 will bring; maybe playdoh penguins — we’ll just have to wait and see.
