Toronto Awards Takeaways: Feinberg on an Off-Year for the Fest

The Toronto International Film Festival — which I have been attending since 2007, and from which I just returned — has long been an important launching pad for Oscar contenders, from 1981’s Chariots of Fire to 1999’s American Beauty to 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire to 2018’s Green Book. But a few years ago, that status was jeopardized when the fest grew resentful of the fact that a number of films that it was advertising as “world premieres” or “North American premieres” were, in fact, first sneak-screening at the Telluride Film Festival, which takes place a few days before it does.

Even though virtually no TIFF attendee would have balked at seeing a film that had previously screened for a relatively small number of people in a remote town in the Rockies, TIFF decided to adopt a hard-line position: it told film makers and backers that if they showed their film somewhere else in North America before TIFF, that film would not be permitted to screen in any of the marquee venues at TIFF during the fest’s opening weekend — the Friday, Saturday and Sunday that follow Thursday’s opening night screening — which is the stretch of time when most media are on the ground to cover the fest.

Over the years since this policy was adopted, we have not been able to get a real sense of its impact, partly because in several of those years the pandemic and the strikes were already making TIFF feel very different. But this year, with neither the pandemic nor the strikes an issue, we found out. As one top awards strategist put it to me, “Opening weekend just felt dead.” Indeed, there were chunks of empty seats throughout the major venues; there was little buzz on the streets and in the restaurants; and there were very few world premieres of films with any real awards potential.

Amazon/MGM’s Unstoppable and The Fire Inside proved to be solid entertainments, but with very limited awards paths. A24’s We Live in Time is an effective tearjerker, but it’s more The Fault in Our Stars than A Star Is Born. Searchlight’s Nightbitch stars the great Amy Adams, and some liked it more than others, but it’s not going anywhere with the Academy. And I could go on. The only opening weekend world premiere of an awards hopeful that seemed to matter at all was the one for The Wild Robot, an animated feature which was produced by DreamWorks Animation (in its 30th year on the scene) and will be distributed by Universal.

It wasn’t until Monday, though, that the fest began to roll out heavy-hitter contenders like Netflix’s Emilia Pérez and and Neon’s Anora (by way of Cannes and Telluride), Focus’ Conclave (via Telluride) and Vertical’s The Order, A24’s Babygirl and Queer and Sony Classics’ I’m Still Here and The Room Next Door (all directly from the Lido). And by that time, much of the press — and therefore much of the potential awards buzz — was gone.

TIFF certainly caught some bad breaks this year. For one thing, it’s not a particularly deep awards season to begin with, which meant that the fest had limited options. Additionally, while a few big names showed up — among them, Elton John (on behalf of the Disney+ documentary feature Elton John: Never Too Late), Robbie Williams (Paramount’s Better Man), plus a bunch of Netflix talent including Angelina Jolie (Maria), Denzel Washington (The Piano Lesson), Will Ferrell (Will & Harper) and Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez) — many others did not. Nicole Kidman (A24’s Babygirl) had to bow out after her mother passed away. None of the stars of Focus’ Conclave — Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow — were able to get out of work obligations in Europe. Emilia Pérez helmer Jacques Audiard suffered a back injury that prevented him from traveling. And the list goes on.

But for the most part, the humdrumness of this year’s fest feels like the result of self-inflicted injuries — and not just the silly festival-exclusivity policy.

My understanding is that TIFF outright rejected September 5, which was the hottest sales title that played at the Venice and Telluride film fests — and, THR reported this morning, has landed at Paramount — ostensibly because it might generate controversy related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So, fearing a backlash, the fest did not screen a film that is going to get a best picture Oscar nomination and maybe even win — it could have done so on opening night, which was, appropriately enough, Sept. 5 — but did screen Russians at War, a documentary thats sympathetic portrayal of Russians involved in the Ukraine conflict did result in protests of such a scale that the fest ended up pulling the film.

The rest of the TIFF sales market was largely comatose. The only deals of real note were A24’s acquisition of the U.S. distribution rights for The Brutalist, a nearly four-hour VistaVision film with an intermission, after it generated a strong response at Venice; and Hulu’s surprising eight-figure purchase of the opening night film Nutcrackers, which stars Ben Stiller, but about which there was decidedly muted enthusiasm.

A lot of other films, many with big-name talent, came to the fest hoping to find a buyer, but left without one, including The Last Showgirl (Pamela Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis), On Swift Horses (Jacob Elordi and Daisy Edgar-Jones), The Friend (Naomi Watts and Bill Murray) and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (the feature directorial debut of Embeth Davidtz).

Which brings us to the TIFF audience award, which has long been a harbinger of Oscar success — each of its last 13 winners went on to at least a best picture Oscar nomination, and three of them, 2013’s 12 Years a Slave, 2018’s Green Book and 2020’s Nomadland, took home that prize — but which this year, we learned this morning, went to Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck.

The Life of Chuck may be a lovely film, but it had virtually no profile coming in to the fest, generated virtually no discussion at the fest, and still does not even have a U.S. distributor. Passed over for it were Emilia Pérez (which finished second), Anora (which finished third) and The Wild Robot (which the fest apparently tried to boost a little by giving it twelve screenings).

In other words, if TIFF’s relevance to this awards season was in doubt prior to the announcement of the audience award, the audience award announcement certainly did not help its standing.