TIFF to screen movies at 5 venues
Online options to be geoblocked to Canada via Bell Digital Cinema
Only two theatres, two driveins and an open-air cinema will physically show movies during the Toronto International Film Festival.
The festival announced the limited venues on Monday, which include the TIFF Bell Lightbox, the Isabel Bader Theatre, the Visa Skyline Drive-In at CityView, the RBC Lakeside Drive-In at Ontario Place and the West Island Open Air Cinema at Ontario Place.
TIFF says most festival selections this year will be screened online via its Bell Digital Cinema.
In keeping with physical distancing measures required due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there will be reduced capacity at the Lightbox cinemas, the Isabel Bader and the outdoor screens.
But TIFF says even the online screenings will have limits.
The digital screenings are geoblocked to Canada and will be viewable on home TV screens using Chromecast or a new TIFF app, which will be available in the Apple App Store on Sept. 9.
Digital movies will be watermarked, either “forensically” or visibly, to prevent piracy, the festival says.
“We’re thankful to every filmmaker, company, donor, member and partner that has joined us on this adventure,” TIFF coheads Cameron Bailey and Joana Vicente Bailey said in a news release. “We are here today because of our commitment to great programming, to collaboration, to bringing audiences together through the love of film and to celebrating the amazing audiences we have right here in our city of Toronto.”
TIFF says it looked at previous years’ capacity and spread it out among the physical and online venues to secure as much seating as possible.
Pre-pandemic, f estival screenings would be spread among a wide range of venues, including the Elgin Theatre, the Princess of Wales Theatre, the Ryerson Theatre and all of the screens at the Cineplex Scotiabank Theatre.
Although the venues are limited, the ticket prices are not.
Individual tickets are $19 for regular films, $26 for premium — the same starting prices as last year — and that applies to both the indoor theatres and the digital cinema.
For the drive-ins, a car of one or two will cost $49, or $69 for three or more.
If you want to watch from the open air cinema, it will cost $38 for a “lawn pod” for two.
The official film schedule will be announced Aug. 25. Just 50 features will be screened, compared to 245 at TIFF 2019.
Tickets go on sale for members between Aug. 28 and Sept. 4, with public sales beginning Sept. 5.
The festival runs from Sept. 10 to 19.