Film Circuit is relaunching with its biggest outreach yet, with more than 100 locations set for 2024 in places including Sault Ste. MarieSupplied
The going assumption when it comes to the Toronto International Film Festival is that the party starts and stops every September. But for the past 33 years, TIFF has quietly extended itself outside the Toronto bubble with its year-round national grassroots screening initiative, Film Circuit.
The brainchild of programmer Cam Haynes, TIFF’s Film Circuit program makes critical connections with film societies, performing arts theatres, and other partners in rural, remote and generally underserved communities across the country to offer a road show of the best indie and art-house cinema that would otherwise bypass those markets. The films – some of them Canadian and some international, some of which played the festival and others that are selected by TIFF in collaboration with local partners – screen in indie cinemas, libraries, community centres and everywhere in-between coast-to-coast-to-coast.
And now Film Circuit is relaunching with its biggest outreach yet, with more than 100 locations set for 2024, including new programs on Fogo Island, Nfld., in Yellowknife, Qualicum Beach, B.C., and Invermere, B.C.. Titles are set to range from the Canadian dramas Solo and The Queen of My Dreams to such foreign-language gems as Fallen Leaves, Anatomy of a Fall and Monster.
The initial idea was a product of trying to reconcile Canada’s geography with the accompanying peculiarities of the country’s film exhibition sector. In the 1990s, even the most critically acclaimed art-house film would only play a handful of cities, and only for a limited window. Today, the landscape is even more complex thanks to the rise of streaming and the thinning theatrical market for cinema of the non-blockbuster variety.
“What Film Circuit does is bring so much more of the country into the conversation around movies and give them a diet of movies well beyond the commercial mainstream,” says TIFF chief executive Cameron Bailey.
Practically, TIFF’s Film Circuit team – two to three people working from the organization’s Toronto office – act as a kind of curatorial and infrastructural go-between for Canadian distributors and local organizers.
“Because we’re in a position to see so many new films before most people do, we can put together a list of films that we think would be interesting for Film Circuit locations, and we liaise with local film clubs or theatres who know their market better than we do and can make suggestions,” says Bailey. The TIFF team also helps manage actually getting the films out to smaller venues, whether that’s transferring a digital cinema package known as a DCP, or even Blu-rays.
The initiative is an easy win-win for distributors, whose titles get the windfall of a second life after their initial major-market theatrical runs.
“Normally, these are places that would only get to see our films at home on video-on-demand, so to have the ability to play a title theatrically and form a connection with audiences is wonderful,” says Rob Harrison, executive vice-president of distribution and marketing for Vortex Media, whose 2021 comedy Peace By Chocolate made $60,000 from Film Circuit alone.
In fact, distributors have come to rely on Film Circuit as an integral part of their release strategies.
“Like every other distributor, when we acquire a film we project how much it will make in certain windows, and Film Circuit is baked into our plan,” says Tom Alexander, vice-president of theatrical sales at Mongrel Media, which has seen Film Circuit success with titles including the hit Canadian comedy I Like Movies and the British drama Living. “There’s also a dialogue between us and TIFF about movies that might perform well on the circuit that we might not have thought of.”
Each market also offers its own surprises, even if there are multiplexes not too far a drive away.
“In Ontario, Collingwood and Orillia have strong turnouts, in B.C. it’s Kelowna – you sort of never know,” says Hilary Hart, co-president of Game Theory Films, whose 2022 drama Riceboy Sleeps is still getting Film Circuit requests long after it’s been made available digitally. “Our upcoming titles like In Flames or Seagrass would be great fits as well – these are all cinephile audiences who are interested and engaged, who we wouldn’t have the bandwidth to reach otherwise.”
Some Film Circuit partners even end up evolving into film festivals themselves.
“We were part of Film Circuit for 18 years and grew with them, learned from them about building relationships with distributors and filmmakers and how it all works, and now we’re here,” says executive director Vincent Georgie of the Windsor International Film Festival. “We then forged our own path forward, but absolutely with a debt due to TIFF.”
Next year will see Film Circuit reintroduce its guest-touring program, in which filmmakers and industry guests are able to travel to screenings across the country and engage with local audiences. The program’s overall expansion is financially supported by Telefilm, as well as Ontario Creates and the Ontario Arts Council.
“We’ve always said that we’re punching above our weight when it comes to the impact of the Film Circuit, especially when it comes to Canadian films. And we’d love to see more support,” says Bailey. “We want to keep people interested and curious in cinema across the country.”