Blog From The Bench

The Toronto International Film Festival is gearing up for its thirty-first year, and having navigated through the myriad of pre-booking, booking, raffling, reserving, ordering, double-checking, long train rides on public transit, line-ups, more line-ups, and standing out in the street because the line extends out the building line-ups, I am now ready to attend once again.

What makes TIFF one of the best film festivals in the entire world is the, ahem, accessibility. Sure, the ticket ordering procedure is slightly less complicated than applying for a home loan with no credit, and just as likely to utterly fail, but it is a fair system in the grand scheme of things. All screenings, regardless of red carpet or celebrity attendance, are open to the public. Try doing that at Sundance or Cannes.

With a solid ten days of non-stop movies and over 350 films screening this year, you end up making some sacrifices when browsing through the daunting list. My first list of films I wanted to see clocked in at just over seventy-five titles, which was just silly, unless I had two weeks scheduled off work, a time machine and $1500.

I have none of those things. However, every year, I schlep on public transportation, stand in the cold, endure long lines, shell out hundreds of dollars just to get a seat at a movie that, in two months, I could see at the dollar theater.

Here’s what I have tickets for this year:

The Lives of Others

Fido

Stranger Than Fiction

The Postmodern Life Of My Aunt

Exiled

D.O.A.P

Quelques Jours en Septembre

You can expect to see reviews for all these films in the next few days, so keep tuned. I’m especially interested to see if D.O.A.P. lives up to all the hype.

And if I bump into anyone famous, I’ll try and tear off some of their hair.