TIFF to Launch Official Content Market, Beginning With 2026 Festival
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TIFF is expanding its industry influence with the launch of an official content market, designed as a central hub for buying and selling screen-based projects, intellectual property, and immersive and innovative content across all platforms.
TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey and chief programming officer Anita Lee made the announcement on Thursday in Cannes, revealing that the market is in development thanks to a CAD $23 million investment from the Canadian federal government.
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“What we’ve heard from the international industry at large is that TIFF is increasingly becoming a significant gateway to North America,” Lee told Variety, sitting down for an interview just a few hundred kilometers away from Cannes’ Marche du Film, which was an inspiration for TIFF’s version. “We have a fantastic culturally diverse, young, sophisticated audience. What the official market will allow us to do is create a hub and infrastructure for companies, producers, to come in from all around the world, and do business most efficiently.”
The news comes as TIFF prepares for the 49th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival in September. The content market is planned to launch with the 2026 festival.
Bailey noted that TIFF has an advantage in building their market now, after the “fluidity” between content has already become a reality, as opposed to trying to adapt something that started as a purely film or TV market.
He explained: “If we’ve learned anything over the last 50 years, it’s that if you follow the artists and you follow the audience, then you can’t go wrong. We’ve seen that artists are working across media – the ideas, the stories, the IP are very translatable. And the audience is doing the same thing. It made sense that the market was built from that as well.”
Like Cannes’ Marche du Film or EFM, the TIFF market will have a physical footprint in Toronto, but in addition to booths and stands, Bailey and Lee have focused on creating dedicated meeting spaces where people can gather for pitches meetings and coffees at one central location.
They’ve also been ideating for the future, and asking themselves “What does a 21st century market look like,” Lee said. “Because we have the opportunity to build it from the ground now. and we will also really lean into new technology to really help us build something that is innovative. Of course, we want to really exciting in-person market during the film festival, but using technology so that it’s supporting business year round.”
“We see the TIFF market being collaborative with other markets,” Lee said, sharing that Dennis Ruh, the former director of Berlinale’s EFM, and Guillaume Esmiol, the director of Cannes’ Marche have been very supportive of their efforts thus far and given great advice. “The TIFF market will also occupy an ideal time in the calendar — those two markets are at the top of the year; we will be in the fall — and that will help to revitalize and fortify the international industry at large.”
This latest innovation comes as TIFF plans their 50th anniversary celebration in 2025 and looks to the future beyond that.
“Like so many other film festivals, we’re undergoing change and renewal, both in terms of our audience, and we’re leaning into our priorities,” Lee said. “We’re trying to step up to meet the next 50 years and the market, in many ways, is part of that vision. [It] will be a separate entity, but is built on what the film festival has been, where it’s growing and will reflect the soul of TIFF and will make the festival more sustainable moving forward, as well.”
Indeed, because film festivals are about films, not just breaking news, the TIFF execs made some time to catch a couple of Cannes’ buzziest titles while on the ground in France. Lee was eagerly anticipating Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” which would debut later that evening, while Bailey talked up David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds.”
“He is hometown, Toronto filmmaker, a real master of his craft, but somebody who was at a point in his life in his career where he’s looking at the big questions of life and death and mortality,” he teased. “It’s all expressed in such a beautiful powerful Cronenberg-ian way, so I can’t wait for people to see it.”
As for the lineup TIFF is planning for this fall, Bailey wouldn’t spill, but shared his excitement about what’s to come. “We’ve been watching for several weeks already — a lot more to come as well — but there’s some great stuff in the works.”
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