The Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) — an 11-day long celebration of cinema and its celebrity — opens on Thursday with an expected reassurance and an exciting promise.
Tiff, considered the most middle brow of the Big 4 international film festivals (amongst the high-brow Cannes, Venice and Berlin), has, over the years, earned the compelling distinction of being what could be called the “Oracle of Oscars”.
With increasing accuracy, Tiff also gives a shout-out to the few that are most likely to bag the top-most awards at Los Angeles’ the Dolby Theatre.
In the 40 years since Tiff introduced the People’s Choice Award, and then expanded it to also include the first and second runners-up, the films that have won the audience’s vote have also gone on to win Oscars. Last year, Tiff voted Green Book as the best film, and Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma as the best foreign film. The previous year it picked Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, and the year before that La La Land… Naturally, then, star-actors come to air kiss, pose and canvass.
Tiff holds another distinction that it takes very seriously — it is the most inclusive of the Big 4 film festivals, not just in its choice of films, but also in who it invites to write about and, thus, expand and enrich conversations around films.
Tiff seeks out films, filmmakers and journalists from various under-represented ethnicities, genders and sexual orientation. In fact, of the total 333 film being shown at Tiff 2019, 36 per cent are directed by women.
And this year, its pursuit of seeking out the standout outliers has also touched India. Of the four films selected from India, three are directed by women, two are from Kerala and two are in Hindi.
The two Malayalam films are Mothoon (The Elder One) by Geetu Mohandas and Jallikattu by Lijo Jose Pellissery, and the two Hindi language films are Shonali Bose’ The Sky is Pink and Geetanjali Rao’s Bombay Rose.
