This fall, Buenos Aires filmmakers will rub shoulders with the best of Hollywood and the indie film world at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)—known to critics and movie buffs the world over as the Festival of Festivals.
Buenos Aires is the first city from Latin America to be chosen for TIFF’s new City to City series, which spotlights films from a different international city each year through screenings and visits by filmmakers.
Since the series began in 2009, it has featured Tel Aviv and Istanbul. The “Paris of Latin America” beat out Manila and Mexico City for this year’s honor.
TIFF, which began in 1976, now rivals Cannes and Sundance thanks to the buzz created by the quantity and quality of its programs, which screen Hollywood’s most-anticipated flicks as well as smaller arthouse films.
It has also promoted other initiatives, such as the Toronto International Film Festival for Children, launched in 1998, and the Film Circuit, which, since 1994, has brought independent films to rural Canadian towns. But the City to City program brings in outside urban perspectives to filmgoers.
Buenos Aires was chosen for its “strong European influence and flavor, its ability to overcome economic crises, and even its legacy of dictatorship, which have influenced the city’s actors and filmmakers,” explained Cameron Bailey, a City to City programmer.
Her colleague Kate Lawrie Van de Ven adds that Buenos Aires was especially attractive to the judges because of its “flourishing creative community” that has made it a twenty-first century hub for
international artists and filmmakers.
The Festival runs September 8 to 18. The selection of films from Buenos Aires that are scheduled to be shown will be available on TIFF’s website in late summer (www.tiff.net).
