TIFF 13

The festivities are officially over! The non-stop screenings, red carpets, interviews, parties and events have all wrapped, and the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival has come to a close. That’s both a good and a bad thing, since I already miss everything that was going on in the city, but I’m also really looking forward to a few minutes of relaxation finally.

The Toronto International Film Festival is a busy event that is filled with remarkable filmmakers and stars, but it’s not every day that you get to interview someone like Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard. This year’s festival, however, offered up that opportunity as the director had two films at the festival: the action drama, Rush, and his music documentary, Made In America.

Before the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival even started, I sat down with director Don McKellar to talk about his latest film, The Grand Seduction, which is set in a tiny east coast town that desperately needs to find a doctor so they can win a contract with an oil platform that will bring jobs to the area.

Filmmakers Nimisha Mukerji and Kaitlyn Regehr have a mission: they want to bring the story of American burlesque dancer Tempest Storm to audiences, and between their Kickstarter campaign and taking their idea to the Pitch This! competition at the Toronto International Film Festival, it looks like it’s just a matter of time before they make it happen.

Five days of the festival are down, which only leaves four more days of screenings, and five more full days of the festival red carpets and festivities. At this point though, the busiest days are definitely behind us at TIFF, and I’m not going to lie–every year that makes me kind of sad.

Stars Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin, Gattlin Griffith, and director Jason Reitman walked the red carpet at the Ryerson Theatre on September 8 to talk about their new film Labor Day at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.

Some days, I never know what to expect from TIFF, and yesterday definitely falls under that category after what I can only call my biggest interview ever. Saturday was never going to be one of my biggest days, at least that I knew of–Monday still looks like my busiest day at the festival–but, some things do happen last minute, and that ended up getting me my big interview.

Movies and moviemaking are at the heart of the Toronto International Film Festival. You can’t have films though without stars and celebrities, and when they roll into town, that also means lots and lots of parties. To get those celebrities ready to party, there are a lot of gift lounges during the festival, but one of the longest-running, and most interesting, is the Tastemakers Lounge.

On September 6, director Bill Condon and the cast of The Fifth Estate–including Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Bruhl, Alicia Vikander and Carice van Houten–walked the red carpet at Roy Thomson Hall for the opening night of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Two days of the Toronto International Film Festival are already in the bag, and it feels like it has just flown by in a strange caffeine-fueled haze. I’ve been preparing for TIFF for the last month, but between becoming a dad at the end of July, and just generally having too much to do, I never did end up feeling all that prepared for the film festival this year, but it has been exciting all the same as it whizzed by my head.