TIFF 2009 Announces Strong Sales From Festival
High Profile Films Like Chloe, A Single Man Get Global Distribution
Oct 20, 2009
The Toronto International Film Festival is a celebration of film and the unofficial start of Oscar season. It is also a marketplace where over 3,000 industry professionals gather to screen as many films as possible to pick up titles for distribution.
Sales Come Late at TIFF 2009
The 2009 festival started slowly in terms of buzz films and sales - and insiders worried that the world-wide recession would surely take a heavy toll on business at TIFF.
TIFF Co-Director Cameron Bailey told Screendaily the impression that Toronto deals were thin was incorrect. "The timing has changed,” Bailey told the magazine. “Last year the first deals started to trickle in after the weekend. This year, they came in after the festival was finished. Not a lot of difference, unless you’re watching the clock.”
Happily, things picked up and high-profile films such as Creation, Chloe, Get Low, Micmacs, Lebanon and A Single Man all found top distributors in all major territories, including the U.S.
Buyers Interested in Innovative, Independent Films
"It is encouraging for all of us in the industry to see that sales continue in a tough marketplace," said Bailey, in a press release announcing the complete list of sales resulting from the Toronto festival. "In particular, Canadian films are competing with some of the best and brightest in international cinema and as the distribution landscape continues to evolve, buyers have maintained an interest in reaching audiences with innovative, independent filmmaking. For film festivals everywhere, that's great news."
The complete list of films sold in territories due to participation in the Festival:
A Single Man, A Town Called Panic, Accident, Air Doll, Ajami, Art of the Steal, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Bunny & the Bull, Cairo Time, Capitalism: A Love Story, Chloe, City of Life and Death, Collapse, Creation, Defendor, Deliver Us from Evil, Dogtooth, Fish Tank, George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead, Get Low, Gigante, Good Hair, Hadewijch, I Am Love, La Danse - The Paris Opera Ballet, Le Père De Mes Enfants, Lebanon, Life During Wartime, Lourdes, Max Manus, Micmacs, Mother, Mother and Child, My Toxic Baby, Nymph, Ondine, Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands, Police, Adjective, Road, Movie, Soul Kitchen, Spring Fever, Suck, The Disappearance of Alice Creed, The Good Heart, The Happiest Girl in the World, The Joneses, The Last Days of Emma Blank, The Secret in Their Eyes, The Warrior and the Wolf, The Young Victoria, Timetrip: The Curse of the Viking Witch, Triage, Valhalla Rising, Vincere, Wild Grass and Women Without Men.
