TIFF - Toronto International Film Festival: The Festival Where the Audience Votes

The Toronto International Film Festival gives its headline award to whichever film the audience rates highest. Ballots handed out at public screenings decide the People's Choice Award, and past winners include Slumdog Millionaire, 12 Years a Slave, Green Book and Nomadland.

That is possible because the festival sells tickets to anyone. There is no industry credential to apply for and no membership to hold. Screenings run across six venues in downtown Toronto, and over the opening stretch King Street West closes to traffic so a free programme runs outside the ticketed one.

This guide covers how the audience vote works, how the rush line gets you into sold-out screenings, what happens on Festival Street, and which venue hosts what.

TIFF stands for the Toronto International Film Festival. It was founded in 1976 and runs every early September, starting the Thursday after Labour Day, across downtown Toronto's entertainment district. A registered charitable cultural organization runs it, alongside a year-round cinema programme in its own building on King Street West.

The part that shapes everything else: attending needs no credential. There is no accreditation process for the public, no membership requirement, and no pass to qualify for. Members buy in a pre-sale first and everyone else a few days later, and a member can transfer a ticket to another person's email address. Anyone who buys a ticket sits in the same room as the industry audience and fills in the same ballot.

Every public screening at TIFF hands out a ballot. Audiences rate the film they have just seen, ratings are tallied across the whole festival, and the highest-rated title takes the People's Choice Award. No jury deliberates and no critics' panel is involved.

The award is followed well outside Toronto because of what happens to the winners. Slumdog Millionaire, 12 Years a Slave, Green Book and Nomadland all won it and went on to take Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Across the last decade, People's Choice winners and runners-up have collected around 20 Best Picture nominations between them. A second audience-voted prize, the International People's Choice Award, now runs alongside it.

Ballots are handed out in the cinema itself, so the result is decided by people who bought a ticket and turned up.

Sold-out screenings still have a way in. TIFF runs a rush line at every venue, and seats that go unclaimed are sold at the door to whoever is standing in it.

How it runs:

• Join the line on the day. There is no advance booking for rush.
• Tell the rush volunteer which film you want, so they add you to the list for it.
• Arrive one to five hours early, depending on how in demand the film is and how large the theatre is.
• Everyone queues in the same line. A Festival Rush Pass does not move you forward, and entry is first come, first served.
• Rush lines are cashless, so bring a card.

How many people get in is not fixed in advance. It depends on no-shows, latecomers, and sponsor tickets returned before showtime.

That is where the single most useful rule at TIFF sits. Ticket holders must be in the ticket-holders line by 15 minutes before the scheduled start time. After that, the seat is released to rush. It is the rule the festival's timing hangs off: it is why the rush line moves at all, why arriving late costs a seat you already paid for, and why watching a red-carpet arrival and then walking into that same film is a bad plan. The carpet runs right up against showtime. Fan zones exist so you can watch arrivals without spending your seat on them.

For the opening stretch of the festival, King Street West closes to traffic between Peter Street and University Avenue and becomes Festival Street. Everything on it is free and none of it needs a ticket.

The recurring pattern across editions is live music, food and drink vendors, art installations, brand activations, and open-air screenings around David Pecaut Square, the public square beside Roy Thomson Hall.

The fan zones are the part people ask about by name. They sit on the south side of King Street facing the screening venues, and they are where the public watches red-carpet arrivals. Each venue holding a premiere has one opposite it, so which zone you want depends on which film is premiering there that evening.

Festival Street has been part of the festival for more than a decade, and it is also where people in rush lines spend the wait.

TIFF runs across six venues, and they are not all on the same street. Three sit on King Street West and the other three are a short walk off it.

• TIFF Lightbox, Reitman Square, 350 King Street West. Five cinemas, exhibition galleries, two restaurants and a rooftop terrace, in the festival's own year-round building.
• Princess of Wales Theatre, 300 King Street West.
• Royal Alexandra Theatre, 260 King Street West.
• Roy Thomson Hall, 60 Simcoe Street. Host of the opening gala and the largest premieres.
• Scotiabank Theatre, 259 Richmond Street West.
• John W. H. Bassett Theatre, 255 Front Street West.

All six sit inside downtown Toronto's entertainment district and are walkable between each other. Allow 15 minutes to get from one screening to the next inside the same building, and 20 to 30 minutes between venues, because the sidewalks are full for the whole festival. Put that beside the 15-minute seat-release rule and two films back to back in different buildings is tight, while two in the same building is not.

Films at TIFF are usually presented by the people who made them. A programmer introduces the screening, the director and often the cast appear in person, and a Q&A follows the credits. A screening therefore runs longer than the film's runtime, which matters when you are planning two in a row.

Red-carpet arrivals run separately, in the evening, mostly at Roy Thomson Hall and the Princess of Wales Theatre. They are timed against the premiere happening inside, which is why the fan zones opposite work as their own free event rather than as something attached to a ticket.

Three strands are worth knowing by name. Wavelengths programmes experimental and artist-made film across features, shorts and mid-length work. TIFF Classics programmes restorations and older titles. Midnight Madness runs genre and horror premieres at actual midnight screenings.

Outhere tracks the concerts, exhibitions and shows running across the city while the festival is on, so you can see what else is happening in Toronto between screenings.

The 51st edition programmes 293 films. Two of them are biographies of Canadians.

Siân Heder opens the festival at Roy Thomson Hall with Being Heumann, her follow-up to CODA. Yan Lanouette Turgeon closes it on 19 September with Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend, on the early career of racing driver Gilles Villeneuve. Sean Menard's documentary Run Terry Run, on Terry Fox, premieres on 11 September.

World premieres in the programme:

• A Talent for Murder, directed by Anton Corbijn
• Evil Genius, directed by Courteney Cox and starring David Harbour
• Onwards and Sideways, directed by John Madden
• Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo, directed by Takashi Miike

Wild Horse Nine, directed by Martin McDonagh, screens in North American premiere. Wavelengths runs 11 features plus shorts and mid-length work, including Lisandro Alonso's Double Freedom and Beatrice Gibson's At Night. TIFF Classics returns with restorations, and TIFF: The Market, the festival's marketplace for screen-based content, runs 10–16 September.

Watch

WILD HORSE NINE | Official Trailer | Searchlight Pictures

Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend | Official Trailer

RUN TERRY RUN | Official Trailer HD

Track what else is on in the city on Outhere's Toronto page, including the concerts, exhibitions and shows running alongside the festival in September.

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