Sundance has Cooper, Cannes has Frémaux and Venice has Mueller, but in Toronto they have a duo splitting the festival director responsibilities. It sort of makes sense when you’ve got four to five times the amount of titles that Cannes has. One part of the tag team is Cameron Bailey with whom I got a chance to throw some questions at within the context of today’s first release of titles (Galas and Special Presentations). I think we can already call this a vintage year for the 35th edition.
I was curious as to why the festival, who traditionally start releasing titles in about Mid-June, waited a full month before announcing the first batch (it just so happens that Venice announce their selections in less than 48 hours). Having covered the fest for several years now, apart from run down Cumberland theater, my only complaint was that there was slightly too many titles presented. I’m only fit to see about 30 to 40-something titles, and I like getting a sense of what was out there in a given year and have a basic notion of the direction the festival programmers choose, so another Q of mine had to do with a tweet I read about the festival actually chopping down the size. Finally I touched upon a film that’ll like last year’s Precious, will have previously shown at Sundance, Cannes and now TIFF. Blue Valentine appears to be well embraced by viewers and fest programmers alike.
