Toronto film festival launches Canada's first formal movie market, backed by $23 million in federal funding

The Toronto International Film Festival opened its 51st edition on Thursday with more than the usual run of galas and red-carpet premieres. Alongside the public festival, organizers formally launched TIFF: The Market, the festival's first standalone industry marketplace for buying, selling and financing film and television projects — a structural change that organizers and Ottawa have been building toward for two years and are betting will reshape how deals get made in North America.

The market, which runs through September 16 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre before the public festival wraps on September 20, is designed to move Toronto beyond its long-standing role as a place where studios buy finished films after an enthusiastic premiere. Instead, it aims to host the earlier, less glamorous stages of the business — financing packages, presales, works in progress and completed-film transactions — in one dedicated venue for the first time in the festival's history.

The numbers

TIFF says it expects more than 6,000 delegates from over 80 countries for the market's inaugural edition, including roughly 230 exhibitors and nearly 1,000 buyers — an increase of some 250 international buyers on top of the 800 who already attend the festival annually. Organizers have set a goal of doubling those delegate numbers by 2030.

• $23 million CAD — the three-year federal investment behind the market, described by organizers as the largest single government contribution TIFF has received since its TIFF Lightbox capital campaign
• 650 — market screening slots available across the venue
• 6,000+ — delegates expected from more than 80 countries
• $2.7 million CAD — invested by the Indigenous Screen Office in eight Indigenous-made titles premiering at this year's festival

Major talent and literary agencies, including CAA, UTA and WME, have confirmed they will bring packaged and completed projects to the market, according to trade coverage, positioning it as a genuine counterpart to the Cannes market in May and the American Film Market in the fall — The Hollywood Reporter described the effort as an attempt to fill the gap between them in the annual sales calendar.

How we got here

TIFF has functioned as an informal marketplace for decades — buyers and sellers have long used the festival's momentum, and the specter of an Oscar-bound premiere, to close deals in hotel suites and side rooms even without an official market infrastructure. What changes this week is the formalization of that activity into a ticketed, badge-accredited market with its own venue, screening slots and programming, run by a newly created market division inside the festival organization.

The federal government's $23 million commitment, announced in 2024 and administered in part through Telefilm Canada's support for a dedicated Canada Pavilion, was pitched at the time as an investment in positioning Canada as a hub for screen-based storytelling rather than simply a production-service destination for American studios. That framing has taken on additional weight this year: CBC News and a Canadian Press dispatch both framed the market's debut against a backdrop of US-Canada trade tensions, with Canadian industry figures describing the moment as an opportunity to capture business as American production and distribution firms navigate tariff disputes and political uncertainty at home.

Who it's meant to help

The market's clearest immediate beneficiary is meant to be the Canadian production sector, which has pushed for years for a formal marketplace that keeps deal-making activity, and the fees and services that come with it, inside the country rather than routed through Los Angeles, Cannes or Santa Monica. The Canadian Media Producers Association is among the industry bodies participating directly in this year's programming.

Indigenous creators are a particular focus of the inaugural edition. The Canada Pavilion marks the first formal partnership between Telefilm Canada and the Indigenous Screen Office, which has invested $2.7 million CAD in eight Indigenous-made titles screening at this year's festival — five features, one short and two immersive works — and is running its own slate of market events, pavilion programming and networking sessions through September 14, according to a statement from the Indigenous Screen Office, with international delegates from Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Europe and the circumpolar North expected to attend.

Reaction

TIFF chief executive Cameron Bailey has described the market as years in the making, calling it an evolution of decades of informal dealmaking into what he has characterized as the only market in North America built directly alongside a film festival. Indigenous Screen Office chief executive Kerry Swanson framed this year's pavilion partnership as a turning point for how Indigenous storytelling is positioned within the wider industry.

"This year marks an important milestone for the ISO. For the first time, we are partnering with Telefilm Canada at the Canadian Pavilion," said Kerry Swanson, chief executive of the Indigenous Screen Office.

Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge, whose department administered the federal funding announced in 2024, has previously called the market "a cornerstone for innovation and collaboration in the screen sector." Not every observer is convinced the market will immediately transform how deals get done: coverage in trade press ahead of the launch, including from industry outlets tracking the buildup, has noted that both buyers and sellers remain uncertain exactly what a first-year market experience will look like in practice, given that Toronto has never run one before.

What happens next

TIFF: The Market runs through September 16, with the public festival continuing through September 20; organizers and delegates will be watching closely for the volume and size of deals announced in the coming week as an early read on whether the market can establish itself as a recurring fixture rather than a one-off experiment. Longer term, the festival has set a target of doubling delegate attendance by 2030, and organizers have signaled they intend to expand market programming — including project financing and works-in-progress showcases — in future editions. Whether the $23 million federal bet pays off in sustained deal volume, rather than a single well-attended launch week, is likely to become clearer only once the 2027 edition offers a second data point.