Elton John arrives at at Oscars party in Los Angeles, Calif., on March 12, 2023. The Disney+ documentary Elton John: Never Too Late will be part of TIFF’s 49th annual edition.LAUREN JUSTICE/Reuters
Films starring Amy Adams, Tom Hiddleston, Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal and Elton John (as himself) are heading to the Toronto International Film Festival this September.
In a break from tradition, festival organizers on Tuesday revealed six world premieres for TIFF’s 49th annual edition, whereas over the past few years programmers delivered a trickle of single-film announcements to whet audience appetites. This year’s first wave of titles also arrives about a month earlier than usual, with TIFF typically staking out mid-July for initial title selections.
The first batch of films is led by the buzzy and provocatively titled Nightbitch, a dark comedy directed by Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) and starring Adams as a stay-at-home mother whose “domestic life takes a surreal turn.” Other titles include the Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck, starring Hiddleston and Canadian Jacob Tremblay; Netflix’s LeBron James-produced Indigenous basketball drama Rez Ball; the animated family drama The Wild Robot featuring the voices of Nyong’o and Pascal; the South Korean period drama Harbin; and the Disney+ documentary Elton John: Never Too Late, directed by R.J. Cutler and John’s Canadian husband, David Furnish.
“The idea this year was to come out earlier to get the conversation going with a spectrum of the programming that we offer,” Anita Lee, TIFF’s chief programming officer, said in an interview. “These titles span genre and culture.”
TIFF also announced Tuesday the first two recipients of this year’s Tribute Awards, the annual fundraising gala that started in 2019 and whose honorees typically find themselves ahead of the pack in the annual Oscars race. Nightbitch’s Adams will receive the TIFF Tribute Performer Award, while director David Cronenberg will be honoured with the Norman Jewison Career Achievement Award. While organizers did not mention whether Cronenberg’s latest film, The Shrouds, will screen in Toronto after making its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last month, there is a good chance the thriller, which was shot and takes place in Toronto, will make landfall at TIFF.
Meanwhile, Canadian actress Sandra Oh has been tapped to serve as inaugural honorary chair of the Tribute Awards, with proceeds from the event going toward TIFF’s Every Story Fund, which supports diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in cinema. (Last year’s Tribute Awards raised $1.4-million.)
The level of talent attending both the fundraiser, which will take place Sept. 8 at the Fairmont Royal York hotel, and the festival itself should be significantly higher than last year’s event, which was affected by Hollywood’s dual writers and actors strikes. The labour actions, which ensured a noticeable absence of red-carpet talent that has become crucial to the TIFF experience, ended up costing the festival $2.76-million in revenue from stakeholders reducing or cancelling their participation.
An open question, though, is whether the ripple effects of the strikes – such as production shutdowns and delays – will be felt as heavily on this year’s festival lineup as they have on this summer’s thin movie season.
“We’re not necessarily seeing fewer titles, but there is a little bit of a shift in the kinds of films,” said Lee. “There seems to be a greater interest in more audience-friendly international art-house films – movies that are getting positioned in a stronger way, with bigger budgets put behind them for awards season.”
The programming announcements arrive as TIFF is developing what it says will be a “game-changing” official content market that will serve as the premiere North American hub for buying and selling screen-based projects. The market, which was announced last month during the Cannes Film Festival and will kick off in 2026, is made possible by commitments laid out in the latest federal budget, which pledged $23-million to TIFF over three years.
“We’re busy building, designing and developing the market now,” said Lee. “Post-festival, it will be an active ramp-up, and you’ll see some of that impact next year, which is nice timing as we celebrate our 50th anniversary.”
This year’s edition of TIFF will run Sept. 5 through 15, with screenings at the Lightbox, Roy Thomson Hall, the Princess of Wales Theatre, the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Cineplex’s Scotiabank Theatre and the Glenn Gould Studio at the Canadian Broadcast Centre. More programming, including the opening-night film, will be announced over the summer.