Like anything in life, the Toronto International Film Festival contains multitudes. If you’re on the industry side, the 11-day event is a marathon of meetings, cocktails, B12 shots and dinners in which you throw away any diets and inhibitions. For movie stars, it’s a circus of being shuffled from one photo studio and red carpet to the next, sometimes with weary publicists shoving puppies in your face.
But for the average attendee, the movie fanatics who make up this so-called “people’s festival,” the experience can be a sweaty, hungry, thirsty waiting game that is the very antithesis of glamour. Waiting for shows to start. Waiting for someone to walk near the “Fan Zone.” Waiting for your friend to finally find you in the Scotiabank rush lineup before the theatre opens its doors, even though you know that they’re habitually 15 minutes late to everything and oh god Wendy why can’t you ever just get your act together and why are we even still close?!? Ahem.
This is the TIFF that you don’t see slapped on the front pages or splashed across your social-media feeds: a kind of strangely alluring liminal space that separates everyday reality from the more, and rare, headline-worthy moments. Watch the clock. Check your phone. Stuff your face. Refuel your caffeine levels. And then, maybe, if everything lines up just right, head into a dark room and lose yourself in an altogether different world for 120 minutes or so.
Photographer Jon Laytner spent a few days roaming TIFF, capturing the emotion (or lack thereof) in the streets, lounges and hotels during the festival.
Festival attendees waiting in line at a pop-up store at TIFF Lightbox.
The red carpet being installed at Royal Alexandra Theatre.
Festival-goers eating on ‘festival row,’ the unofficial name for King Street West during TIFF.
After an after-party at Roy Thomson Hall.
Before the crowds: inside the TIFF Lightbox on King Street West.
A Second Cup ad promoting TIFF on festival row.
Crowds of people and photographers wait for celebrity sightings at a premiere.
The immersive box-office experience at Roy Thomson Hall.
The Producer’s Lounge at the Hyatt Regency.
The business centre at the Hyatt Regency.
Industry professionals and fans gather on King Street West ahead of a premiere.
The Industry Lounge at the Hyatt Regency.
The international film section at the Hyatt Regency.
A red carpet area in the festival zone.
