Thursday marked the launch of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, which brought many film producers to America’s northern neighbor to find films that are worthy of purchase and distribution. Some people see TIFF as the start of awards season. TIFF is actually really similar to many other film festivals in its worldwide acclaim. The Sundance Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival also bring in many producers from the United States and abroad to hopefully purchase the distributing rights to the films being screened. Overall, these festivals do a great job of promoting independent filmmaking. The problem is, they do it too well.
Many of those I consider the best filmmakers in the business found success because of these festivals. Quentin Tarantino struck it big when his film, “Pulp Fiction,” won the Palme d’Or, Cannes’ top prize. More recently, Damien Chazelle made a short film that premiered at Sundance, where he received funding to make it into the feature film, “Whiplash.”
While many filmmakers make it into the festivals that hold all the prestige, there are a great many more who do not. Even if the films the submitted are worthy, they do not fit the theme or the schedule the festival is trying to put together, or they are in a genre that has too many submissions. They lose out on the chance for their work to be seen by the audiences Sundance and TIFF draw. Many more films do not submit to these festivals because the entry fee is exorbitant. The films that do earn a spot may not get purchased, and the filmmakers themselves are left with the burden of the entire financial weight of the film. Sure, they can submit their films to smaller festivals that still draw a fair audience, but without the sticker that says it was worthy enough to get into the top fests, they won’t draw as large of a profit as they should for their work.
Now let me backtrack a little bit — I want to be clear. I am not saying that every film submitted to Sundance or TIFF should be accepted. There are plenty of films that do not deserve to be in this festival, or any festival for that matter. Bad films are made, and bad films are submitted to top festivals based on the hopes and dreams of aspiring filmmakers. In high school, I knew someone who submitted their short film to Sundance. The film was not bad, but it wasn’t great either. It was dismissed, as it should have been. However, there are films that should at least have the chance to find a producer who will buy the distributing rights.
That these films will not get that chance is not the fault of the festivals. Nobody should fault Cannes or Sundance for being the best film festivals out there, because they rightly are. The problem, as I see it, is that film producers are wearing blinders to other festivals. People have made many great films that premiere at smaller festivals because they didn’t make it into the bigger ones. This is simply unfair to both the filmmakers and the smaller festivals. Smaller festivals can put in a lot of work to become a top tier festival, but most of them never will. And no matter what, the films they bring in won’t find producers, no matter how good each film is. This is all because the top film festivals hold too much producer-power.
I wish I had a good solution to this problem. I wish that there would be a film that comes up out of a smaller festival and shows the world how great these festivals can be. But that is a Cinderella story, and it most likely won’t happen any time soon. The viable solution I can see is to plead with executive producers who have the power to go to smaller film festivals every now and then to check them out. They might just find a film they enjoy, and they can probably get the rights for a bargain, too. I know many producers believe their time will be much better spent attending only the largest festivals, but there are a number of great films that don’t make it and are otherwise commercially viable.
