TIFF

By happenstance, I was in Toronto this year during the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Which led to me taking the above photo.

I was walking up Yonge Street one afternoon on my way to meet a friend. I liked the look of the lights underneath the canopy at the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre, so I stopped to take a photo. Within seconds, several people stopped to see who I was taking a photo of (and by “who,” I mean which celebrity) and they began pulling out their own cameras and phones. At which point I smirked to myself, put my camera in my pocket, and continued on my way. Only during TIFF would pointing your camera at a movie theatre cause a traffic jam!

That night my friend and I saw a French film set in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, a beautiful park in Paris I have yet to see for myself. I tried to get tickets to a few more films, but no luck there ― the ones I wanted to see were selling out as fast as I was trying to buy them online. No matter, though. Two of the films I was able to see a few weeks later at VIFF.

TIFF is a smaller festival than VIFF ― it shows fewer films and is five days shorter ― but it’s an industry event, so to speak, and therefore gets a lot of attention because Hollywood and the world’s media comes to town. I could feel the buzz in the air the entire time I was there, which makes September an exciting time to visit Toronto.