Toronto Finally Admits It Is a Market, on Government Money That Runs Out

TIFF's 51st edition opens on 10 September with Siân Heder's Being Heumann, and alongside it something the festival has never had: TIFF: The Market, running 10–16 September at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, with the Ritz-Carlton and the Intercontinental as official hotels.

Nobody involved calls this a relaunch or a return, and anyone writing that is wrong. IndieWire's formulation is the accurate one: Toronto "had been a film market in name only," and this is the first time it has been formalised. The Toronto Star's word is "formalizing." Screen Daily calls the previous arrangement "an unofficial market."

The numbers, and the correction

Two figures are being conflated, and they are opposite sides of the same ledger, published nine days apart by the same reporter:

• More than 130 buyers, from 49 countries — the demand side, reported 17 June. Named: Picturehouse, Tanweer, Cineart, Bona Film Group, Metropolitan Film Export, Tobis, Eagle Pictures.
• More than 150 sales companies and promotional bodies — the supply side, reported 26 June. Named: Goodfellas, Anton, Playtime, AGC, CAA, Pyramide, XYZ, WME, FilmNation, UTA, plus national bodies including Screen Australia, KOFIC, Unifrance, the BFI and German Films.

Both were superseded by festival week. The live figures: roughly 6,000 industry participants from 80+ countries, a 20% rise on 2025; more than 800 buyers, of whom 200 have either never attended TIFF or not for years and are receiving subsidised travel and accommodation; and more than 225 exhibitors.

And here is the number story nobody is telling. On 4 September the Toronto Star published a correction to its own market feature: the piece had quoted market head Charles Tremblay saying industry attendance would "more than quadruple." TIFF actually expects a 20% increase. The market's own boss overstated growth by roughly a factor of twenty, in print, five days before opening.

A one-off cheque, to build a permanent business

The market runs on C$23 million of Canadian federal money — TIFF's largest federal award since the Lightbox was built about sixteen years ago, supported by Telefilm Canada. It is non-renewable. Screen Daily puts the consequence plainly: TIFF "will need to establish the market and its new revenue streams as a self-sustaining business."

Part of that money is flying in and housing 200 buyers. IndieWire asks the obvious question: will they still come when the festival stops paying? Tremblay's stated goal is to double to Cannes and Berlin scale — 12,000 to 15,000 participants within four or five years — off a fund that runs out.

The pitch to those buyers is geopolitical, and CEO Cameron Bailey has been unusually direct about it. Executives at Cannes and Berlin, he told the Star, told him they preferred to avoid the United States entirely. His line: "In the current trade climate, I think it's even more of an advantage." And: "We're in a very cosmopolitan city that's plugged into just about every other place in the world."

Worth noting that the American Film Market's answer to the same convenience problem was the exact opposite. AFM moved to Las Vegas for a single edition in 2024, was widely judged to have failed, and returned to Los Angeles specifically so buyers could take all their local meetings on one US trip. AFM 2026 runs 10–15 November at the Fairmont Century Plaza, to warm reviews. It is about eight weeks after Toronto closes.

The sellers are not unanimous

Some are in. Anna Godas of Dogwoof: "It's a new launch pad for some of our films that, to tell you the truth, we were all really wanting." Dylan Leiner of Sony Pictures Classics: "It's a litmus test… packages and projects that were not ready for Cannes can launch now rather than wait for AFM."

Others are attending without joining. Arianne Fraser of Highland Film Group: "We're really treating TIFF as we've treated that market in the past… But in terms of it being a fully-fledged film market, we're attending, but not as part of it yet."

The sharpest objection comes from the competition. Pascal Diot, who runs the Venice Production Bridge, on Tremblay's ambitions: "I am not entirely pessimistic about his prospects. But I think it's not what the industry wants now." And, on whether Toronto has cost Venice anything: "So far, the Toronto market has not had any impact on our numbers."

The calendar objection is the practical one. Pia Patatian of Noora Films thinks Toronto beats AFM only "if they change the date," and calls it "impossible" for European and Asian buyers to fly in twice in two months. Kirk D'Amico of Myriad Pictures gives the tidiest summary of the mood: "We're incredibly supportive of TIFF. But we're seeing how it rolls out."

The market's proof of concept is a film that sold because there was no market

The exhibit TIFF keeps pointing at is Obsession, Curry Barker's debut, which slid quietly into Midnight Madness in 2025, detonated in front of a paying public audience, sold to Focus Features for around $15 million in what was reported as the most lucrative festival acquisition on record, and has since grossed over $500 million worldwide.

On 11 September, TIFF will screen it again — inside the convention centre, as the new market's showcase, with Barker and his star on stage.

It sold in the era Screen Daily calls the unofficial market, when sellers booked their own rooms. The exhibit proving TIFF needed a trade floor is a film that never touched one. And the trade-off is real: press and industry screenings have been cut to one per film in many cases to free up rooms. Gersh's Jessica Lacy welcomes that for precisely the reason the market exists to circumvent — "it forces buyers to go to the public screenings, which are much more impactful."

The opening film, and one thing to get right about it

Being Heumann is a scripted narrative feature, not a documentary. It is an Apple Original Film, written and directed by Siân Heder, who won the adapted screenplay Oscar for CODA. Ruth Madeley plays Judy Heumann; Mark Ruffalo plays the federal bureaucrat obstructing her, alongside Dylan O'Brien, Rob Delaney and Ray Fisher. It dramatises the 28-day sit-in at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco in 1977.

It premieres twice on 10 September — 6pm at the Princess of Wales, 8pm at Roy Thomson Hall — then opens in select US theatres on 6 November and on Apple TV on 13 November. Heder receives a TIFF Tribute Award in Impact Media at the 13 September gala, alongside Helen Mirren.

The Academy quietly raised Platform's status in the same week

This deserves more attention than it is getting, and it is being reported loosely. TIFF's Platform prize — a juried section, expanded this year from 10 films to 12, with its jury grown from three to five under Pablo Trapero — now sits on a six-festival list beside the Palme d'Or and the Golden Lion.

What that actually means: a non-English-language film that wins one of those awards can be submitted for the international feature Oscar without its home country's selection committee choosing it. It bypasses the national bottleneck. It is not a nomination, not a shortlist place, and not automatic. Anyone writing that a Platform winner "can be nominated" has garbled it. It takes effect this season.

The punchline arrives on opening day. The film the clause most obviously covers — Cristian Mungiu's Fjord, this year's Palme d'Or winner, premiering at TIFF on 10 September — got its national nod anyway. Romania's committee voted for it unanimously. The bottleneck the Academy just opened, the first car through did not need.

What is on in the window

• 10 September — Being Heumann; Fjord (Mungiu, Palme d'Or, with Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve); Tender Loving Care (Mike Leigh); Atonement (Boyd Holbrook, Hiam Abbass, Kenneth Branagh); Club Kid.
• 11 September — the Obsession encore and fireside chat, inside the market.
• 12 September — Elsinore (Simon Stone; Andrew Scott, Olivia Colman, Peter Mullan, Juliet Stevenson), with Scott already a Best Actor talking point.
• 13 September — TIFF Tribute Awards Gala.

Market Summit speakers across the week include Seth Rogen, Danny Boyle, Colman Domingo, Gary Oldman, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Christine Vachon, and Warner Bros. Motion Pictures Group co-heads Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy. Packages already announced ahead of the floor opening include Copperhead (Miles Teller, Jason Momoa, Adria Arjona), a Michael Keaton/Morgan Freeman western, and a Halle Berry/Zoë Kravitz/Colin Firth title.

What nobody knows yet is whether any of it sells. The floor opens on Thursday. Everything above is preparation; nothing above is a deal.