The Toronto International Film Festival has launched its first official industry market, TIFF: The Market, running Sept. 10-16 alongside North America's biggest film festival.
The market will center on a finished film component but also open doors for presales, co-financing and packaging deals, while expanding into television, interactive projects and games. Market boss Charles Tremblay has been careful to frame the new venture as complementary rather than combative, noting that Toronto is not positioning itself as a direct rival to the AFM in November or MIPCOM, the global TV market held in Cannes each October.
As a freshman event, TIFF: The Market is designed for experimentation, drawing in a wide mix of projects at different stages of production and with varying financing and distribution strategies, all set to pitch at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The lineup pairs international auteurs Werner Herzog and Malgorzata Szumowska with actors-turned-filmmakers Courteney Cox and Tim Blake Nelson, alongside blockbuster director Zack Snyder venturing into indie territory. Art house titles will sit next to commercial genre films, and political documentaries alongside indie animation. Buzz around the fest also includes a reunion of the Mara sisters, an action project being pre-sold by Michelle Yeoh, and an awards-season contender tied to Cynthia Erivo.
The new market arrives on the heels of a banner deal from last year's unofficial dealmaking scene in Toronto: the record $15 million sale of Curry Barker's global box office hit Obsession, which Focus Features acquired in a deal negotiated by Christian Mercuri of Capstone Studios.
“It's a tough market, but there's a lot of opportunity if you're doing original ideas that push the envelope a little bit and take risks,” Mercuri said. “Indie success with original fare is not hearsay anymore, we can point to what's working. As an industry, it's our responsibility to listen to the new voices and make bets on original fare.”
