TIFF at 50: Cameron Bailey Reflects on Building Cinema Community in an Era of Constant Change
One of the many pleasures of attending the annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is the moments when festival CEO Cameron Bailey strides onto the stage to introduce a premiere or talk with a filmmaker. It’s during those screenings that this festival’s unique blend of art, accessibility, and audience engagement comes fully into focus.
“I never think that people who know movies and love movies should ever be snobby about it. There’s no reason to do that, no matter how high the artistic achievement,” said Bailey in a telephone interview. “Movies began as a democratic art form for everybody, and so I never want to present a film like I’m presenting a lecture or university seminar. This is something to appreciate together and feel whatever people feel when they congregate in the dark to watch a movie.”
This sense of community celebration will be especially true as TIFF this year marks its 50th anniversary. There will be special screenings and commemorative events in the months leading up to the festival, which takes place from September 4 to 14. Over the summer, TIFF presented 50 films that screened in the festival over the past five decades. During TIFF, there will be ongoing recognition of the “thousands of people who created it, select films, put the event together and maintain its consistency every year to make it accessible to the public,” Bailey said.
TIFF is now a major stop on the festival circuit with a long track record of showcasing eventual awards contenders. But the festival had modest beginnings. Originally called the “Festival of Festivals” when it was founded in 1976 by William Marshall, Henk Van der Kolk, and Dusty Cohl, the inaugural event drew 35,000 attendees, compared with 700,000 last year. The name “Festival of Festivals” was dropped in 1994, and it was officially renamed in 2009.
“We started from a place of wanting it to be the people’s festival. There is no jury prize; the top award is the people’s choice, so that’s built into the fabric of our festival,” said Bailey, who grew up in England and Barbados before migrating to Canada and beginning his career as a film critic. The festival’s legacy loomed large even before Bailey joined TIFF as a programmer. He was named artistic director of the festival in 2012 and in 2021 became its executive director and then CEO.
“I never forget what a luxury it is to be in this job and [be] a part of film history,” he said, citing memorable premieres that unspooled before his tenure, such as Boogie Nights, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Big Chill or when “a young Christopher Nolan” attended TIFF to present his 1998 debut feature Following.
“I try to hold onto that. I remember the first time we introduced films like Moonlight to our audiences. That was a special moment.” TIFF has championed filmmakers, including many Canadian artists, and these also remain important milestones for Bailey.
“There are filmmakers whose work I just love,” he said, citing French actress and director Julie Delpy, star of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy (1995, 2004, 2013). “Last year was the third film [of hers] I’ve presented,” Bailey said of the Delpy-directed Meet the Barbarians. “There is so much emotion in [those moments] because you never know when a film or filmmaker is going to take a prominent place.”
As TIFF has grown in size, stature and influence, it has also faced “momentous things over fifty years and we want to take time to recognize them,” said Bailey. “September 11 [2001] happened during our festival.” The COVID-19 pandemic forced TIFF in 2020 to pivot to a mix of virtual and in-person events for two years, followed by the challenges posed by the SAG-AFTRA strike in 2023.
“It feels like, just in the last five years, we’ve had to reinvent what film festivals were,” he said. “During COVID, we had drive-ins and online platforms. Then the actors’ strike shifted what we could and would be, and we had to adjust to that. Now, streaming platforms are influential all over the world, and there is constant volatility, and we have to adjust to that and to changes in audience habits. Gen Z and millennials are coming at us with different [screen watching] traits. We want to present a collective communal experience in movie theaters to audiences who have lots of other choices. We must be highly adaptable all the time. That switch never gets turned off. At the same time, our financial stability is in question, too. A philanthropic donor base has supported the festival for years. It’s been complicated; I’m not gonna lie. But we are gratified that every year, people continue to turn up. We had the highest number of attendees last year — 700,000 — between cinemas and street events.”
Despite these challenges and shifts, Bailey is confident that as long as there are movies and audiences who crave the festival experience, TIFF will continue to play an important role on both industry-wide and personal levels.
“This past Sunday, I interrupted my family weekend and went to see a film proposed for this year’s festival by a great filmmaker. It was not fully completed, so I was in an editing suite with the film not fully done. To see a film when it’s still kind of vulnerable, when the filmmaker hasn’t quite put down the paintbrush, is something I hope I never take for granted,” said Bailey. “Then knowing you will present this film to many people like a secret you’ve been keeping — that never gets old.”
Featured image: TORONTO, ONTARIO – AUGUST 20: Cameron Bailey, CEO, TIFF speaks onstage during the TIFF 50 Canadian Press Conference at TIFF Lightbox on August 20, 2025 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Brian de Rivera Simon/Getty Images)
