TIFF Kicks Off on Historic Day With ‘Swimmers’ But Finds Itself in the Deep End With Ticketing Woes
variety.comManori Ravindran International Editor The Toronto International Film Festival kicked off on a historic day with one of its strongest opening films in years in Sally El Hosaini’s “The Swimmers,” but what some audience members will likely remember is the stressful experience of getting to Roy Thomson Hall in the first place.
TIFF, which has gone digital this year via Ticketmaster, has been plagued with ticketing issues all week thanks to a complicated voucher process for public tickets.
While it was hoped that many of the technical kinks would be ironed out by opening night, this wasn’t the case. Media outlets, including Variety, that received opening night tickets from the film’s studio — in this case, Netflix — didn’t receive their tickets in time for the screening due to “technical glitches” and had to be rounded up and escorted to their seats by representatives for the streamer.
In the festival’s opening ceremony, new festival CEO Cameron Bailey briefly acknowledged the death of Queen Elizabeth II in much the same way as he did for the film’s earlier 5 p.m.
Read more on variety.com
