There were days where I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to be able to sit with loved ones and share these first-time viewings in real time, and others when the combination of quarantine cabin fever and less-than-stellar runs of films made it seem like everything would be mediocre. A privilege and, 32 movies, shorts, and episodes later, a pile-up.
Seeing movies is a gift, and I can’t wait to go back next year.
Having the privilege of being a local and living a short commute away from Festival Street, year after year, I’m able to focus on what makes TIFF most special for me: its varied Canadian programming.
I told the almost comically friendly customs agent that I’m in Canada for business and not pleasure, so in the interest of not getting apprehended by the mounties, my top priority remains the almighty cinema.
I was struck by three common themes braided amongst the 15 feature films I watched at this year's True/False Film Festival: community, a search for moral clarity, and the nature of truth and reality.
Three years into attending the True/False Film Festival and I finally feel as though I’m getting my sea legs. It feels good to consider a problem I’ve never come across before, to encounter the world through another’s eyes. I go to the movies to see something I’d otherwise never get to see, and True/False offers a unique distillation of that ethos.
Our intrepid TIFF correspondent wraps up his festival coverage with a look at new films from Guillermo del Toro, James Franco, Agnes Varda, Armando Iannucci, Martin McDonagh, and Louis C.K.
As I walked up the steps to the Walter Reade theater, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of triumph, my first day back on campus. Everyone was there! In line, tired, clutching cheap coffee and festival badges. Some people got haircuts. Even the grumps were buzzing, happy to finally have some place to be.
You adjust the bowtie on your tuxedo. I’m at Cannes, a fucking dream come true.
For any theoretical questions concerning how to Sundance, I was more concerned with the question of why to Sundance. And the answer is: access to a week of new sensation and perception in the doldrums of mid-winter.
On a particularly frustrating day in my life, I applied to a workshop for young film critics in Ghent, Belgium. I hadn’t been to Belgium. I wasn’t even sure if I qualified as a “young film critic.” But I wasn’t doing anything and I wasn’t going anywhere, so I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
This, too, is the condition of festival-speak. I pick some films over others because the framework of my experience is not experiential; it is exegetical. I organize myself around opinions I am going to have about things I have not yet seen.











