In September 2023, I attended the Toronto Film Festival for nearly the entire duration, skipping the final day as I had to catch my flight back home, though at that point I believe all the films were just additional showings. I was excited going into this because this had the prestige like Tribeca, only this time I was going to be able to attend for more than a day.
This was hands down the best experience I’ve had at a film festival.
For starters, it helped that I arrived before the festival started, allowing myself to settle in, instead of getting into the city and scrambling to attend the first screening I’d bought tickets for. Also, because I was there for more than one day, or in the case of my first festival, because I wasn’t trying to jam as many movies as I could into one day, I was able to enjoy myself and space out the movie going experience instead of trying to force myself into viewing a movie at every available timeslot.
This was also in no small part due to the availability of tickets for films I was interested in when it came time to purchase and plan out my trip, but what felt like an initial setback turned out to be a wonderful turn of events. I ended up going seeing one movie a day, except for the last Friday of the festival, where I watched two movies back to back, which freed up my day to enjoy things beyond movies.
Although I was on vacation, I was still waking up at 5 in the morning, and because I was training for a marathon and needed to fit that in around showtimes that tended to be in the afternoon, I did my runs early in the morning. Even though I was up early, I would ease into the day, and would still be out of the hotel room by 7, walk a couple of empty blocks to the park, and run my three or four miles, with the long runs happening on Saturday mornings. Even after I was finished, the sidewalks weren’t that crowded with people who had to endure being so close to the sweaty mess I was after my training.
I’d shower and relax for a bit, and depending on when that day’s showtime was I would either take in the city, something I hadn’t been able to do at either of the previous film festivals, or head straight to whichever theater was playing the movie I was seeing. Just like the previous festivals, the movies weren’t all playing in the same theater, but at TIFF, the entire festival was held in the theater district, so the location of any day’s films were all on the same street and right next to each other.
The schedule also allowed me some time to relax, both before and after the marathon training, and between either attending that day’s showing or some other point of interest around the city. During these times that I was relaxing in my hotel room, I was often outlining the next novel that I had planned to start writing two months later, so I was still putting that time to good use. But I would still find myself feeling guilty that I was spending about an hour in the hotel room at times during the day, and had to remind myself that I had gotten in a good workout to start the morning, had gone on a small adventure exploring another area that interested me in the city (CN Tower, the Hockey Hall of Fame, and 2 local breweries, to name a few things) and had watched another movie at the film festival.
And even when I was back in my hotel room for the night, I was still living it up, because the hotel I was staying at was the Mariott in the Toronto Blue Jays stadium, where I had specifically gotten a room that looked out over the outfield, because the Blue Jays had a homestand for the entire duration. So at the end of each night, I would roll open the shades and watch an entire game from the window, drinking beers and cheering the team on.
These days were just absolutely packed.
I had originally signed up for the festival to network. With the WGA strike still going on, I once again wasn’t able to do so, but even with that situation, this turned out to be one of the best vacations I have ever had.
It was so great that Toronto is my current front runner for place to retire.