The Toronto Film Festival‘s planned official content market that will run concurrent with the event starting in 2026 is starting to take shape.
Anita Lee, the fest’s chief programming officer, has announced that CAA co-head of media finance Roeg Sutherland, Goodfellas CEO Vincent Maraval, and Niv Fichman, founder of Toronto-based Rhombus Media are among members of the first round of advisors of the TIFF Content Market’s newly-created global advisory committee.
The first group of TIFF market advisors also comprises former Cannes market chief Jérôme Paillard; Noah Segal, co-president and co-founder of Canada’s Elevation Pictures; Monique Simard, former president of Quebec SODEC (Société de développement des entreprises culturelles); and Kerry Swanson, CEO of Canada’s Indigenous Screen Office. Additional members will be announced in coming weeks.
Last year, in May, TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey and Anita Lee announced plans to launch a bona fide TIFF market designed as a central hub for buying and selling screen-based projects, intellectual property, and immersive and innovative content across all platforms thanks to a CAD $23 million ($16.9 million) investment from the Canadian federal government.
“Having an official market will allow many more companies, national promotion agencies, as well as newer producers to actually be able to attend TIFF in a much more substantive way,” Lee told Variety.
“Another key element that we want to stress was that this is not only a film market, but it’s a content market. It will also include TV series and new technology,” she added.
Lee also pointed out that many international companies are currently only able to attend TIFF when they have one or more films in the festival’s official selection.
“But what they have expressed to us is that TIFF having an official market would mean that they can attend every year and do business on their full slate films. Films that they may be packaging; films that they may be selling versus just the films in the official selection,” she underlined.
Also, for companies from emerging regions – whether it’s Asia or Latin America, and so on – TIFF having an official market “will mean that they can also receive greater support from their national agencies to attend and bring larger delegations,” Lee said.
As for the Toronto market’s infrastructure, “We were envisioning a real central hub where exhibition spaces can exist and some supporting spaces to really encourage meetings, and networking,” Lee went on to note, specifying that the new TIFF Content Market market venue has not yet been decided.
