What to Expect at 2019’s Toronto International Film Festival

Even by the standards of an always-anxious movie business that sees the apocalypse coming around every corner, 2019 has been the summer of Hollywood hand-wringing. A slight decline in ticket sales, combined with the unprecedented dominance of Disney films (the studio has released five of the six biggest hits of the year) and the continued growth of streaming media, has fueled something of an identity crisis within the industry. So this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, the start of the awards-season marathon that ends in February with the Oscars, feels particularly significant.

With major studios releasing mostly franchise entries and family films over the summer, the fall is packed with artsier fare, for which Toronto serves as the proving ground. Last year, the festival’s audience award, which rode that buzz (and a whole lot of other, more ) to an . Other major Oscar contenders such as and played at TIFF in 2018; this year’s offerings include some from more than 84 countries, some of them certain to overwhelm the next few months of discussion.