Author Darren Hughes

On 31 December 2018, the fundraising arm of the Toronto International Film Festival sent a year-end email solicitation, urging recipients to support cinema by helping the organisation hit its annual target of 3...

In 2018, the Toronto International Film Festival joined Sundance, Berlin, Locarno and Vienna in announcing major changes in leadership. After 36 years at TIFF, the final 24 of them as chief executive officer, P...

My conversations during the first two days of the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival were dominated by two subjects: Twin Peaks: The Return, which had aired its final episodes earlier in the week (and ult...

The 2016 Wavelengths shorts program opened auspiciously with Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Sangrienta (Bloody Silhouette). Made in 1975 in Iowa City, the two-minute, Super-8 film begins with a high-angle shot of Mendi...

The 2011 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Wavelengths program included Mark Lewis’s short film, Black Mirror at the National Gallery, in which two bulky, fully articulated machines – one man...

Feature Image: I am Here “WTF is this movie?!” I scribbled this note midway through I Am Here, Fan Lixin’s trainwreck of a documentary about Super Boy, an American Idol-style talent show that is a ratings s...

“Most of the filmmakers I cover don’t get paid to make their films, so why should I expect to get paid to write about them?” – Michael Sicinski To get straight to the point: if the 2014 International Film Fest...

Frederick Wiseman’s second documentary, High School (1968), was at the time of its release an unprecedented glimpse into America’s public education system. Throughout his career, Wiseman has bristled at the ter...

By coincidence, the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival began and ended for me with strikingly similar images. The first film I saw, Jafar Panahi’s Closed Curtain, opens with a minutes-long shot through a ...

Nicolas Rey’s third feature film, differently, Molussia (2012), is an adaptation of a novel he’s never read. Written between 1932 and 1936, Günther Anders’s The Molussian Catacomb analyzes the rise of fascism...

“Where OMG Meets WTF”. This was the first tagline I spotted at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. Others included “Where Fantasy Meets Reality”, “Where Indie Meets Epic”, “Where Wow Meets Huh?” an...

Festival Business The opening weekend of the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival also signalled the beginning of TIFF’s second year in the $200 million dollar TIFF Bell Lightbox. The public side of the ...