The last edition of the Toronto Film Festival came and went with a shrug. Movie lovers would be forgiven if they’ve never heard of any of the fest’s high-profile world premieres, such as “Eden,” “Unstoppable,” “Nightbitch” and “Nutcrackers,” despite boasting stars like Jude Law, Sydney Sweeney, Jennifer Lopez, Amy Adams and Ben Stiller.
The unmemorable lineup stood in stark contrast to the glitzy affair over at the Venice Film Festival, which took place a week earlier and unveiled a slew of awards players and box office hits, including the Brazilian drama “I’m Still Here,” Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and “Babygirl” with Nicole Kidman. Along with the Cannes Film Festival, Venice has soared in popularity and notoriety as their North American counterparts — most notably Toronto and Sundance — have struggled to remain relevant.
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As indicators of Cannes’ and Venice’s growing influence after COVID shook up the movie business, last year’s Oscar best picture winner, “Anora,” debuted at Cannes, and its probable closest competitor, “The Brutalist,” bowed at Venice. Meanwhile, TIFF’s most recent audience award winner, usually an Oscar precursor, was “The Life of Chuck,” which didn’t make a splash when it finally landed in theaters this summer. And Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize winner, “Atropia,” still hasn’t secured distribution, while 2024’s winner, “In the Summers,” scored only a token theatrical release.
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The pandemic was partly responsible for the imbalance toward international festivals, which previously had been viewed as on par with their North American competitors. COVID’s different surges and variants meant that Sundance had to cancel not one but two in-person gatherings. And Canada had much stricter quarantining and social-distancing guidelines, which resulted in hobbled attendance and many stars opting to skip TIFF all together.
“Venice has completely risen in profile because they managed to operate better than anyone during the pandemic,” says John Sloss, a veteran sales agent and the founder of Cinetic Media. “That gave them momentum.”
Compounding the problems for North American festivals, Toronto lost its major sponsor, Bell Canada, in 2023, and Sundance’s canceled editions left the organization in a deep financial hole. All the while, numerous leadership changes at Sundance have created a sense of instability, with festival director Tabitha Jackson and CEO Joana Vicente leaving their jobs after less than three years. (Eugene Hernandez, the well-respected former head of the New York Film Festival, has taken over as festival director as Sundance searches for a new CEO.)
But studio executives and awards strategists believe that Toronto and Sundance may have endured the worst of it — and are poised for a rebound. TIFF, which begins its 50th edition on Sept. 4, has assembled its strongest lineup since the pandemic, with world premieres of Rian Johnson’s latest whodunit, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” as well as Derek Cianfrance’s crime dramedy “Roofman,” starring Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst. Other films that will debut up north are Aziz Ansari’s comedy “Good Fortune” with Keanu Reeves and “Rental Family,” which could put Brendan Fraser back in the Oscar race for the first time since “The Whale.”
Sundance, after deciding to relocate from Park City, Utah, to Boulder, Colorado, in search of more generous government support, is getting a chance at a refresh. Though the festival isn’t moving until January 2027, there’s hope that departing the posh ski town will allow Sundance to attract the kind of audacious voices that put the festival on the map.
“The most promising thing I see in the festival circuit is Sundance moving to Boulder,” says Sony Pictures Classics co-president Tom Bernard. “If you look at the audience that’s at Sundance currently, it’s not the young people who come to discover films anymore. That changes the programming, because the audience changes. With Sundance going to Boulder, they’re going to have 5,000 new eyeballs every year. I think they’re going to cultivate a younger audience that’s there for discovery.”
There’s no escaping the reality that the business that sprang up around Sundance in the ’90s and early aughts has collapsed. It used to be that art-house films like “Little Miss Sunshine,” “The Blair Witch Project” and “Napoleon Dynamite” routinely broke through to the mainstream; now it’s rare that a Sundance film lands a splashy distribution deal, let alone turns a profit in theaters.
And major studios are making fewer prestige films of the kind that once used Toronto as a launching pad, preferring to divert more resources to action-heavy blockbusters and family fare. At the same time, traditional Hollywood companies like Disney and Warner Bros. are dealing not just with the competition from streaming services, but also with TikTok, YouTube and other platforms that offer more immediate and bite-size forms of entertainment.
“Not just festivals but the entire film ecosystem is being challenged right now,” says one film financier. “Since everything is interconnected, everyone is suffering. When the pandemic happened, people got out of the habit of going to theaters, and they haven’t regained it yet.”
Like Sundance, Toronto is looking to shake things up. Earlier this year, the festival announced plans to launch a formal film market as part of its 2026 edition. Toronto wants to position itself as a hub of dealmaking. But some industry figures worry there are already too many markets of this kind, particularly as companies have become more conservative about spending money to buy the completed movies or packages sold there.
“Everybody across the board — buyers, sellers, agents — has tightened their belt significantly,” says Todd Olsson, president of international sales at Highland Film Group. “So it may not be worthwhile to send people to all these different markets and festivals. It can get very expensive.”
Another big reason for the shift in authority is that Venice and Cannes attract a hefty contingent of European film executives and creatives, many of whom are awards voters. That’s important because in recent years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has expanded the number of international voters, giving them greater influence on what captures top prizes at the Oscars.
“Awards over the last seven to 10 years have become more international in terms of the voting base,” says Nick Shumaker, the head of AC Independent, a sales and finance division of Anonymous Content. “There’s no better place than Cannes or Venice to launch a movie that feels like it belongs in the awards conversation.”
It also helps that Cannes and Venice are two of the most stunning locations in the world. After all, a red carpet in downtown Toronto is no match for a premiere in the Côte d’Azur or the floating city. Cannes has become almost as famous for its fashion as for the films it showcases. And in recent years, Venice has offered its share of memorable red-carpet looks (think Lady Gaga and her haute couture headpiece) and viral moments that draw the attention of the world (a teary Brendan Fraser basking in a standing ovation). These instances alone justify the staggering costs of flying talent halfway across the globe.
Because Cannes requires its movies to be released theatrically, Netflix can’t show films at the festival. That’s left Venice as the de facto launching pad for major Oscar contenders from Netflix, an enviable position given that the streamer has continued to shell out big bucks to A-list auteurs in its quest to finally land a best picture statuette. This year, Venice is playing host to Netflix movies from Guillermo del Toro (“Frankenstein”), Kathryn Bigelow (“A House of Dynamite”) and Noah Baumbach (“Jay Kelly”), which offer such stars as Jacob Elordi, Adam Sandler, Idris Elba and George Clooney. Few gatherings can compete with that level of celebrity.
Toronto, meanwhile, has been accused of not being curated enough and simply showing too many films, which makes it more difficult for movies to stand out. But what Toronto does offer is audiences filled with locals, whose tastes are more aligned with those of average moviegoers, giving studios a better sense of how films will play outside a festival setting.
“Toronto is populist,” says one independent studio executive. “It doesn’t sound as sexy as going to Italy or the mountains.” But “people still really like going to Toronto,” says another indie studio exec. “It’s not difficult to get to; it’s not expensive like Cannes. It’s a great place for regular audiences.”
Executives concede that Toronto isn’t attracting the kind of wall-to-wall media attention that Cannes and Venice deliver. However, they think it will only take a few strong lineups to turn things around.
“The second Toronto has an audience award winner that gets nominated for Academy Awards,” says Scott Shooman, the head of IFC Entertainment Group, “it gets them back on track.”
Elsa Keslassy contributed to this report.
