Finding balance between falling in love at the movies and judging them

Filmmakers choosing winner for TIFF’s new $25K contest want to swoon, not criticize

Choosing one film out of 12 to honour with TIFF’s new $25,000 international cinema prize will be like finding a lover or experiencing a peak emotion, members of the jury say.

“It’s a little bit like dating with these 12 films,” Chinese director Jia Zhangke said Friday, in a meet-the-press session along with his fellow jurors and filmmakers, Agnieszka Holland of Poland and Claire Denis of France.

“You meet them all and then you see which one you hit it off with. But I hope I’ll fall in love with at least one. I’ll be in trouble if I fall in love with six. I’ll go crazy.”

Holland and Denis agreed, expressing their desire to have an “emotional reaction” to the films they’ll be judging, rather than a strictly professional one.

The title of Jia’s 2000 film, Platform, a drama of social change, was chosen as the name for the new juried TIFF program that will keep him busy watching films for 10 days during the festival, alongside Holland and Denis.

Platform was created by TIFF’s Piers Handling and Cameron Bailey to showcase a slate of unique films by emerging global directors.

TIFF has other film juries, for Canadian features and first features, but this is the fest’s first attempt at a competition similar to the Palme d’Or race at Cannes (although Han- dling hates the word “competition”).

All three jurors are celebrated filmmakers, with a host of international awards and nominations, and they’ve all had previous experience on various festival juries. Jia, 45, and Denis, 69, have both been Palme d’Or contenders (Jia won the 2013 Cannes screenplay prize for a Touch of Sin) and Holland, 66, has Oscar experience, receiving an adapted screenplay nomination in 1990 for Europa Europa. All three expressed the standard lament of festival jurors everywhere that even though they don’t like judging art, they’ll do their best regardless.

But as serious as their job is, they all prefer to think of themselves as regular members of the audience, hoping to swoon at what they see on the screen. In keeping with TIFF’s popu- list spirit, they’ll watch the Platform films along with critics and regular filmgoers at daily screenings at the Elgin Theatre, before making their final choice to be announced Sept. 20, at festival’s end.

The jurors expressed reluctance that they could only give one prize. Many festivals allow for multiple prizes, including spontaneous “jury prizes” like the ones they have at Cannes.

Handling hinted the one-prize rule could be bent, because TIFF wants to have an “organic process . . . We want to be flexible.”