A festival that food fans can sink their teeth into
Toronto Food Film Fest will include in-person and virtual screenings
For Jacqueline Tam, co-founder of the not-for-profit Toronto Food Film Fest (TFFF), food offers endless storytelling possibilities.
“Food is very unique to one’s experience growing up or one’s culture,” she says. “I come from a Chinese background, so food was the central part of our life. It was always, ‘Are you eating? Are you hungry?’ ”
In 2018, while talking about food — over food, of course — Tam and Joanna Maracle, a colleague in the film and TV industry, came up with the idea of a film festival devoted to the subject.
The duo’s inaugural season launched in 2019, and last year’s — well, we don’t need a spoiler alert. The nascent festival went virtual, making the movies available on a Netflix-style portal to viewers anywhere in Ontario, and their panel talks open across Canada. The silver lining: “We ended up getting a lot more fans outside Toronto,” says Tam.
This year’s edition will be a hybrid: a mix of in-person movies and events (Oct. 1 to 4), to be held outdoors in the orchard at the historic Spadina Museum, plus digital screenings (Oct. 1 to 15, watchable in Ontario).
The lineup includes 14 shorts and six feature films, with a bike-in screening of “Peace by Chocolate” on opening night. The drama is based on the true story of the Hadhad family, who fled war-torn Syria and started a chocolate company in Antigonish, N.S.
Also on the agenda are a series of “Talks in the Orchard,” covering such hot topics as the distinction between cultural appropriation versus appreciation, issues around food insecurity in the GTA, or how to get into scrappy sustainable cooking.
Tam’s ambitions for TFFF’s future include extending into year-round programming and launching a pitch competition this fall, so they can help filmmakers (particularly new and under-represented ones) from the start.
It’s all in keeping with their mission to create an inclusive community that celebrates and supports indie film and local food.
“Our goal is never to make this into something like Hot Docs or TIFF — although that would be fantastic,” says Tam. “We just feel like we’re more grassroots and wanting to keep to the ground of the community we’re in.”