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What: The 39th annual Toronto International Film Festival
a.k.a.: TIFF
When: September 4 - 14
Why: Traditionally, the Toronto Film Festival was the kick-off to Oscar Season, with the big awardsy movies setting themselves up for the final few months of the year. In recent years, and to no small amount of consternation from the TIFF folks, other film festivals have been eating their lunch. Last year's two top Oscar contenders — 12 Years a Slave and Gravity — made their world premieres at Telluride and Venice, respectively. This year, again, a lot of what might have otherwise been feathers in Toronto's cap found their way to the Rockies, most prominently Reese Witherspoon in Wild and Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game. Both those films will still play TIFF (as 12 Years a Slave did last year), but you get the sense that up in Toronto they're kicking at the dirt, mumbling about how things used to be different.
In 2014, it seems that everybody's just going to have to get used to sharing festival films, and Toronto (which will screen nearly 400 films in total) is big enough to absorb the blow of some premiere snatching.
Cannes | Telluride | Venice |
---|---|---|
The Clouds of Sils Maria | 99 Homes | 99 Homes |
Foxcatcher | Foxcatcher | Good Kill |
Leviathan | The Imitation Game | Far From Men |
Maps to the Stars | The Look of Silence | Hungry Hearts |
Mr. Turner | Madame Bovary | The Look of Silence |
Mommy | Mr. Turner | Manglehorn |
The Search | Mommy | Passolini |
Still the Water | Rosewater | A Pigeon Sat on a Branch ... |
Timbuktu | Two Days, One Night | Red Amnesia |
Winter Sleep | Wild |
Three Hearts |
Who Wins? Unlike something like Cannes, TIFF is not a competitive film festival strictly speaking, but they do have their People's Choice Award, which is voted on by the audiences.