There has probably never been a worse moment to open a film market in Canada.
The country is locked in a grinding trade war with its largest partner and closest neighbor; tariff threats have crept from steel and lumber into the entertainment conversation, and the independent film business — the actual product on offer in Toronto this week — is in the middle of its own slow-motion restructuring. The class of buoyant new distributors who arrived at TIFF two years ago with fresh cash and big talk has thinned out considerably. Streamers are buying less and paying less. Theatrical is a coin flip.
And yet TIFF: The Market, which runs Sept. 10-16 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre alongside North America’s largest film festival, opens with something no first-year market has any right to: momentum, and a founding legend.
A legend called Obsession.
Twelve months ago, a 25-year-old YouTube sketch comedian walked into the Royal Alexandra Theatre with a horror movie he had shot for $750,000 with a cast of unknowns. He walked out with the biggest TIFF acquisition in history — an estimated $15 million worldwide deal with Focus Features — and the film went on to gross $513 million globally, becoming the top-grossing festival pickup of all time.
