Cameron Bailey: TIFF at 50 - the Making of Toronto’s Economic Blockbuster

This fall, the Toronto International Film Festival marked its 50th anniversary, a milestone that celebrates not only great storytelling, but the powerful economic engine behind it. 

In this special #TIFF50 conversation, TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey joins Jennifer van der Valk, the Toronto Region Board of Trade’s Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications, to reflect on how a local showcase for Canadian filmmakers became a global industry hub.

From $240 million in annual impact to the next generation of creative talent and cross-border collaboration, Bailey shares what it takes to turn art into enterprise and why Toronto’s film story is also a business success story still in the making.

Transcript

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From the Toronto Region Board of Trade, this is Toronto Talks. Toronto, let's talk about how a film festival became an economic blockbuster for our region. We're doing our very best to play a role in making great Canadian talent visible to Hollywood and other parts of the world and building a stronger bridge. This fall, the Toronto International Film Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary. Five decades of bringing the world's storytellers, investors and audiences right here to Toronto. But TIFF's success isn't just on the big screen. It's in the hotels, restaurants and studios that buzz with business thanks to Toronto's creative economy. To mark this milestone, Cameron Bailey, TIFF CEO, recently sat down with Jennifer Vandervoak, our Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications. They talked about TIFF's global impact and what the next 50 years of film, technology and talent will mean for our region. Here's that conversation. Cameron Bailey, welcome to the Toronto Talks podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are thrilled to have you. Well, thank you for having me. Yeah. Well, we are coming out of the 50th anniversary of TIPS. So let's start with a massive congratulations to you. Thank you. And the entire TIPS team. Thank you. This was a big one for us. I mean, 50 such milestone number. We wanted to do it right. And we were fortunate enough that we had what I consider is one of our best festivals. Really great numbers in terms of audience attendance. Lots of excitement in the city. Prime Minister with us on opening night and some great talent in town. So it all worked out. But we, for I'd say over a year, were thinking about how to make sure we did it right. Right. I imagine. Yeah. Well, it's a huge achievement. And it's really proof of the legacy event that TIFF has become. So, so much more than a festival. And it's a milestone anniversary, obviously. And so there are probably a lot of pieces that came together to celebrate that occasion. So you said you've been planning for over a year. Any highlights you want to point out? We knew that we wanted to bring a lot of the people together who had been a part of building TIFF over many, many years. So on opening night, we had all the previous leaders of the organization on stage with us in Roy Thompson Hall just to thank them and to show the kind of the legacy of the leaders. We had all of our previous board chairs with us as well that same night. we put together a series of videos where we invited people who had been a part of TIFF over five decades to come and just tell stories, a lot of which I'd never heard before. There was a time when Francis Ford Coppola, director of The Godfather at Apocalypse Now, was lured to Toronto with the promise of a big celebration of his work. And at that point, we were actually headquartered down on the waterfront at what was then called the Harbor Castle Hotel. And Bill Marshall, one of the founders of TIFF, brought Francis Ford Coppola into the top floor of the Harbour Castle. And he had arranged for three military helicopters to rise up outside the window like an apocalypse. Oh, wow. And I don't know how he did that. I know I could never get away with that now. But it's the kind of thing that really made those early years so excited. And put it on the map. I mean, things like that don't happen every day in any city, never mind in Toronto. But you're right. You probably couldn't do it now. But actually, that's a good segue. So looking back, let's talk about you a little bit before we get into more about TIFF. But renowned industry leader, you grew up in Barbados. You came to Toronto. You studied literature at Western University before finding your way to film. So I love that. But you've now spent four years, five years as CEO. Yeah, four years as CEO, co-head before that. Different roles over many different years. Yeah. So you've been with TIFF since 1990. So you've seen a lot and you've built a lot in that time. So you must have several of your own personal milestones in that journey. So tell me a little bit about that. How did you arrive here? I mean, you mentioned studying literature. That was probably the gateway for me. I was not a big movie buff growing up. Like I see kids now who, you know, they're on Letterboxd and they're compiling all the movies they've watched from the time they're nine or 10 years old. I was more of a reader. I spent a lot of time in the library. I was a book nerd. So I loved reading about just about anything. Right. And it's funny now to see movies and series, you know, Lord of the Rings and all these things that I was doing, that I was reading as an adolescent, like 13, 14 years old, now turn into these vast world building movie series. But for me, it was my own imagination that was really driving me from what I was reading on the page. And so I started a degree in English literature and I finished the degree. But partway through that study at Western, I took a film course and I loved it. It just opened up a whole new world for me because the storytelling was there as in literature. But the visuals, the sound, the idea that movies could do so much more than entertain. That was what I discovered in university. And it just took me in a whole new direction. I was writing for the campus newspaper at the time and then began writing about film. I was writing about music first and translated that into professional work when I graduated. I wrote for the Alternative Weekly in Toronto now. I was a film critic there for many, many years. And then I was doing a little bit of programming on the side, just on a volunteer basis. With TIFF? No, no. But I guess it somehow made its way to TIFF. Somebody found out about it. Piers Handling, who was in the director of programming, and then the CEO, he approached me and asked me to come on board as one of the people to select the Canadian films. So I started to do that as I was writing freelance. I was a freelancer for almost 20 years before I had a full-time job. I'd never had a full-time job until I came on as co-director of the festival in 2008. Wow. So I, you know, I learned a lot and I grew a lot during my years at TIFF. And thankfully, TIFF gave me lots of opportunities to do different things, to travel to parts of the world I'd never been to before, to take on the selection for the whole continent of Africa, for South Asia. And eventually I got into European and American films as well after having done Canadian films. And every time it was like a new window opening on a new way of looking at the world. Because you learn a lot from what filmmakers show. And their vision. Their own visions, how they represent their own societies. And every time I was doing that in a new area, I felt like my own perspective of the world was really expanding. So that was amazing. I got to meet incredible artists over the years and industry leaders and travel a whole bunch in almost every continent. And all through movies. Yeah. Which is amazing. It's its own adventure. Yeah. Really. That's incredible. I mean, it's actually a great testament to, you know, people who are cutting out on their career and agonizing over, you know, what do I be? Where do I go? It sounds like maybe curiosity and just that consistent excitement about what's coming and what's next and what you were learning and experiencing is really kind of helped you get to where you were. Yeah. Curiosity is exactly it. Yeah. And being kind of just alive to opportunity. Right. So I never had any kind of a career plan. Still don't. But I was just always curious about what was next. Curious about could I actually meet that new challenge. Curious about learning new things. And then just, you know, it's that old adage, you know, you don't have to get ready if you stay ready. So I thought I was always staying ready. Yeah. Staying ready and being open to opportunity. So, all right, let's come back to TIFF a little bit, because obviously you haven't lost any of that energy and that excitement. And here we are. So every September, of course, TIFF draws tens of thousands of visitors to Toronto, as well as attracting the people who live and work here into something that kind of transforms the city into something very, very different than we are for most of the year. And I hear, though, that it's obviously there's a new economic impact report that TIFF is working on. So TIF really is more than a cultural phenomenon. It's a week-long event, but it's also a year-long enterprise. And the economic ripple effect is huge. So tell me a little about that ripple effect. So we have different ways of measuring that. The last comprehensive economic impact study we did was several years ago. And in 2025 dollars, that showed that we have about a 240 million dollar impact annually. Wow. A festival and all of our year-round activity at TIFF Lightbox as well. And that's significant. And, you know, if we compare that against, let's say, six nights of Taylor Swift in Toronto, we're doing roughly that on an annual basis, you know. So that's important for us to be aware, for all of our partners and stakeholders, for the city, I think, as well. And the city's been great supporters of what TIFF does, as have all of our partners in making sure that we stay connected with our audience, which is what's driving that economic impact. The good news is we've just got some very recent numbers, which are not as comprehensive as our last study. But they tell us that this past festival, 2025, saw a overall a 10 percent growth over last year in the one kilometer radius from the center of Tift at King and John in downtown Toronto. Those businesses, restaurants, hotels, you know, all different kinds of businesses saw a 10 percent increase in economic activity, which is a healthy sign. Because you have to remember, it's not that long ago that we were all shut down. Yeah. I mean, that's quite a comeback. Yes, exactly. So TIS doors were closed for 18 months during the pandemic. We came back in early 2022. And that first year back, even that festival in that September of 2022 was a real struggle. I hear. Because a lot of people still weren't comfortable or fully ready to go back out amongst hundreds of people in a movie theater or thousands of people on Festival Street. And so it was a good year for the year that it was, the first year fully back. But we knew we had to grow more from that. So 23, of course, we had the Actors Strike, which also affected us. Oh, I'd forgotten about that. Right. So, of course, just about every Hollywood actor is a member of SAG-AFTRA, the Actors' Union. They weren't able to participate in promotional activities. They didn't come to Toronto in large numbers, unless they could come in another capacity, like a producer or director. So it really reduced the red carpet sizzle. Yeah, the glitz, the glam that everyone comes out for. Exactly. So that affected us in terms of just some of our hospitality partners and others who knew that they wouldn't be able to activate in the same way. So that year has a bit of an asterisk on it as well. Last year was the first year when it felt like we were fully operating on all cylinders. And then this year, same thing, but even better. So that's great news. And we're hoping to grow even more from here. Yeah, that's phenomenal news. And really good to hear. And all of those barriers that had to be overcome. And also, I mean, Toronto was shut down for a lot longer than a lot of other places around the world. The border was closed for longer than some other countries had as well. And so many of our biggest names are coming from the U.S. And it was very difficult to travel here. So the tariffs and some of the U.S.-Canada relations and some of that tension there, you don't think that had any impact, obviously, if it feels like we had a great bounce back this year and celebration of that milestone. I'd say a couple of things happened. One is we saw that dynamic happen early in the year and it wasn't something we had to respond to instantly. Like the actor's strike happened in the middle of the summer when we were almost done with the festival. It was very hard to pivot quickly, although we did our very best. This year, when the whole tariff and border and 51st state stuff started happening, this was early in the year. What it actually generated was this incredible visible pride in Canada and all things Canadian and that included Canadian storytelling, Canadian talent, Canadian films, Canadian stars. And so we opened this year's festival with this documentary about John Candy which came along at exactly the right time. And it was a kind of a perfect cross-border story because it was directed by Colin Hanks, the American son of Tom Hanks, made by Amazon MGM, this giant company which has become a very big player in the content that we show. But it was about a Canadian star who was born right here in Toronto, or born in Newmarket actually, but grew up in Toronto. And it was produced by Ryan Reynolds, who has been such a great flag waver and champion for all of this Canadian. So that all came together on our opening night, and we were able to celebrate Canadian talent, but also celebrate the amazing things that Canadians and Americans do together. And that was really more the story we wanted to tell because that's part of the success of our festival as well. That is a great story. And I hope that resonates beyond the film. But you're right, that the relationships that are built, the sharing of talent, vision, ideas, you know, a lot of what we see in the U.S. and Canada, those relationships don't happen if we're not ready to work together. So what a wonderful way to open this work. Exactly. You think about between filmmakers like Danny Villeneuve from Montreal who makes the Dune films and is doing the next James Bond or James Cameron who grew up in Canada or the talent like Sarah Pauly and the two Ryans, Reynolds and Gosling. I think we really overperform compared to our population when it comes to Hollywood success. And that's something that we want to celebrate, but also to make sure that we're also giving a platform to that next generation. There is that next Ryan Reynolds out there. There is that next Dinugelneva out there. And often they will be seen first at our festival. Right. It is the place where you also pull out and spotlight on some young talent. So it's given a start to a few people, not just actors, but directors, filmmakers, producers. It's funny. I was just talking with some of our team at TIFF who are currently working at TIFF. They have people in their 20s and early 30s, and they're wondering, you know, what's my career going to look like? And I have to remind them that Don McKellar, writer, director, actor, producer, was a TIFF staffer at a certain point. And so many people who've gone on to great things as creators in the film and TV industry actually were members of TIFF's team at a certain point. So you're a talent machine there, which is great. So when you reflect on the history of TIFF, you know, I mentioned and we talked about how it's not just the festival. There is a there's a year long programming. It's a year long organization. What are some milestones that actually transform TIFF into being not just a festival that we take part in every year, but something that contributes to the vibrancy and the economy of this city all year long? Yeah. I mean, there are so many things. I'll just try to kind of break it down into a few and to keep it brief. But just this past weekend at TIFF Lightbox, our cinema complex at King and John in Toronto, we had a film called Kantara, which is a film from South India, which has now turned into TIFF's biggest ever box office on a weekend. So it actually, every other film we played in theatrical release at the Lightbox, we had a massive influx of people from South India who were living in the Toronto area, in the GTA, who wanted to see this film and were showing it in a number of languages from that part of India. And that allows people to see it in what is their own native tongue, their mother tongue, and bring their families. And we have thousands of people come in to see that movie. And that's the kind of thing that we can do because we've got a team that knows those films when they're coming in. We're able to present this film in the best possible environment in terms of just the presentation standards, the image and the sound and everything. And I think we've got the best popcorn in the city. That's just my opinion. I agree actually yeah it's really good right it's really good we we try to offer this as a way to to make the light box a hub for the culture of film so that's happening with whether it is films that are on their way into Oscar contention or just films that are from you know other parts of the world where they don't get a big commercial release otherwise we're the home for all of that at the same time we coming out of the pandemic one of the things we did and I'm so glad we did is we launched a couple of new initiatives to bring in more people more often to the building including an under 25 pass so if you're under 25 for no charge you can get access to all of our classics programming at the light box it's about 250 films a year for free some of the classics of cinema. And then for new films, you might pay to buy a ticket for those as well. And that's brought in a whole new young cohort. I bought. Lightbox, who come to see stuff sometimes once a week or multiple times per week. They hang out in the building. And of course, young culture consumers attract everybody because people want to be around cool young people. Right. So those things have really helped enliven the light box and the area around it. We also brought our film circuit back. So this is our network of film clubs all across the country, from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland's Fogel Island. We've got about 110 of those small film clubs, all volunteer run. We help them find films, source the films that they're going to show. They organize their own small communities, but they may be screening to, you know, five, 600 people every month. And it's a way to bring people out of their homes, off their couches, out of their sort of isolated bubbles. Off their phones. Yeah, off their phones. We're all, you know, subject to, I think, being more and more isolated now. And these are real social gatherings. You don't just come and watch a movie in the dark together, but you have coffee or dinner afterwards. You're meeting each other, talking to each other, and we're helping to facilitate that across the country. So those are some of the things that we do year-round. We also do talent development. We're working with young screenwriters and directors and producers to help them develop their skills and open and expand their networks as well. All of that is happening as we're putting on the festival or preparing for the festival every September. But this is an all year round activity. Well, those are some aspects that I didn't know about the Under 25 Program. I mean, to all of our young professionals out there, I mean, what a great thing to take advantage of. And, you know, it's a good way to connect with a colleague or maybe a date night, but that's fantastic. It works as a date night. Yeah, absolutely. And one that looks pretty sophisticated, not just adding any movie theater. That's right. So the national reach, it sounds like, with the clubs that you're put together and then that, you know, upbringing of young talent and young film lovers. That's incredible. So the festival is shaping, you know, the culture of the people in Toronto year round. How is it shaping tourist behavior? I wish I had more comprehensive information, but anecdotally, we know that we get great participation from the GTA, from the Southern Ontario region, cross-border from New York State, Pennsylvania, New York City as well, and people who live in LA, people who live in real film centres who come to the festival every year. most of them not to do business. I mean, many do come to do business, but they come because they love movies. They know this is a great opportunity to see the best that's coming from, let's say, Cannes and Venice and other festivals earlier in the year, plus a whole lot of new films, and to do it in a kind of public environment. It's not like a industry-only festival, but they get to meet other just casual film lovers. So we're told every year people take their vacations and they'll come up and spend, you know, a week or 10 days here for that, and that happens every single year. We know roughly that on the industry side, or on just the kind of commercial side, roughly 20% of the participants in our festival this past year in 2025 were international. And that's led by the US, the UK, China, big participants as well, and France. And that's a mix of industry and just general public as well, who are coming sometimes to do business, to make deals, to have meetings here, expand their networks. But sometimes they're just coming because they love movies or they want to see their favorite star. We know that like Brian Cox was at our festival this past year and after Succession, everybody loves Brian Cox. And we had people travel from the UK to come and see Brian Cox in Toronto. you know and it happens with stars from from South Korea from China from India from all over the world as well yeah the stargazing is pretty incredible during that week at TIFF that's for sure lots of lots of spottings and sightings and that's a it's a high number I mean of how many international visitors that you have for that so let's talk a little bit more about the film sector and how TIFF has helped to shape and strengthen Toronto's role in the film sector worldwide. Lots of different ways, but I think the best example that I can think of is Guillermo del Toro, the great Mexican director who's made incredible movies over Mayors. The most recent one is Frankenstein, which was at our festival and which will be playing at TIFF Lightbox in theatrical release very soon as well. Guillermo del Toro first came to Toronto to our festival to show his early films and got to know people here. And as he describes it, fell in love with the city. In the end, he bought a home here and lived here for many years. He now shoots just about everything he does, at least partly in Toronto. Frankenstein was shot in studio spaces just in the east end of the city. And he works, maybe this is the most important thing, he works with Canadian crews and Canadian talent. And he's been able to give people like Tamara Deverell, who is very experienced already, remarkable opportunities to work on some of the best films that Hollywood will make. Yeah. And so he's been part of cultivating both of the industry here, a film culture, and just elevating what we all do here. And it started with him coming to our festival. He's not alone. Other filmmakers have had similar experiences as well. And in addition to that, of course, we have the local homegrown filmmakers, people like David Cronenberg and Sarah Pauly and Clement Bergo and others who've grown up working in Toronto. And many of them have the opportunity to go to Hollywood. They could live in L.A. and work in L.A. But even when they're working with Hollywood companies, Women Talking, I think, is a good example. Sarah Pauly's film for which she won a screenwriting. Also based on a book. Also based on a Canadian book, exactly. She still lives here. She still shoots here. She works with Canadian crews and talent. But she is now a global filmmaker. And that's something that we will always want to support. The early films by someone like Sarah Pauly premiered at our festival. That's true of our other filmmakers, Denis Villeneuve as well. We showed a lot of his early work before Hollywood discovered him. And we consider that a part of our role. We want to identify great Canadian talent. This past year, we had a new film by Chandler Levesque. She's just making her second feature. And her first feature, I Like Movies, also launched with us. She's actually a former TIF staffer as well. She's very close to TIF. Yeah. But her next project is going to be with Adam Sandler. Oh, wow. So that dynamic, and we hope that that talent that starts here will always work back and forth across the border not simply go to Hollywood and stay, but we're doing our very best to play a role in making great Canadian talent visible to Hollywood and other parts of the world and building a stronger bridge. Yeah, that cross-pollination is incredible. And I think that what's shift that's happened over the last several decades is it's not just Canadians that are churning out artistic, indie style fills. Like these are huge blockbusters with huge actors and talent. But with that still, that artistic sentiment, I think that, I don't know, I think Canadians have something there. There's something really unique about Denis Villeneuve, let's say, who was able to make these massive global blockbusters on big, big Hollywood budgets, but still worked with real artists and craftspeople and bring some of his own personal creative spirit. into those films as well. You watch a movie like, well, either Dune 1 or Dune 2, and you see that these are art films in a way on massive budget, right? And what he's able to do with both image and sound, I think, is remarkable. He's very thoughtful. He's such a film fan that, you know, when the first Dune came out, I approached him and I said, Denis, we'd love to have you come and just show one of your favorite films at the Lightbox. and he chose Lawrence of Arabia, which he had seen. There's a connection there. Yeah, like an epic, right? Yes, yes. The desert setting. He loves deserts. I didn't even know. And he'd seen it when he was young in 70mm in Montreal, and he had what he describes as a kind of a transformative experience, a real epiphany watching that movie. And so we got a 70mm print of Lawrence of Arabia, and he interrupted his promotion campaign for Dune to come to Toronto, and watch it with our audience and talk a little bit about it. And to me, that's the sign of a real artist. Oh, yeah. That's a testament to his being an artist, but also to the draw that Tiff has to bring and create that experience for him and then the audience that loves him. That's incredible. So we talked a little bit about people being on their phones and we talked about drawing people back into the experience that the film sector and industry and watching a movie has. But it's also it's a next generation of, you know, people who are consuming art and consuming film and consuming content in a different way. So the industry itself must be evolving in response to that. So how is TIFF responding to that evolution, to AI in film, to the adaptation of how people consume? What are you doing to adapt? So one of the things I do at TIFF, in addition to, you know, my current role, is I try to keep my hand in programming a little bit. And I do a monthly series called From the Collection. TIFF is lucky enough to have a collection of 35 millimeter film prints that we can draw on. And so once a month, I will present one of our one of the film prints in our collection for our membership. And what's interesting is that there is a very large proportion of that audience that is young. I would say it's under 35. So pretty much digital natives, very much people who have a strong online presence. But that doesn't prevent them from coming to see a movie because it's projected on 35 millimeter film. And what I find interesting about this cohort, Gen Z and then the coming Gen Alpha, they really value the analog because they didn't grow up with it. Right. And so it's unique and distinct and has its own characteristics in the same way that they might like vinyl records or just being in the outdoors or hanging out in person with friends. And they see that as something that is a bit of a departure and a break from their online lives. And so every month we get a lot of people who are in their 20s and early 30s coming out to see 35 millimeter prints, asking questions about, you know, what does it mean that this print is 30 years old? Last night we showed a film print that was 70 years old. 70? Yeah. The original print from 1954, actually 71 years old, that the audience in the 1950s would have seen. And so that's a different experience than watching something on a streaming service, right? Absolutely. It has, like, it moves you in a different way, I think almost physically, because you can put yourself in the shoes of people 70 years ago who are watching the very same thing that you're watching. It's like when you go to a museum and you're in front of an object that's hundreds of thousands of years old and you can kind of imagine the humanity that would have been a part of its original creation. It's almost somewhat humbling to think that people with much less technology, less access to all of the tools and the things that we take for granted, were making productions like that back then. That's right. Yeah, and film is a very young art form relative to painting or music or anything else. But it has a long history now relative to our own lives, you know, 120 years or more. And to kind of try to immerse yourself in that and not see it as just an endless stream of content, I think that really heightens the experience for us. So pulling on experience a little bit, the board has talked a lot over the last year and done a lot of work on the experience of moving around this city and the gridlock and congestion. And we've had stars who've come for events as concert artists who have complained about the congestion in the city. Now, to pull off something of the magnitude of TIFF, you are clearly working with a lot of partners to make that come to life. Was our traffic and congestion something that you considered and did it have any impact or did you hear anything this year? Yeah. So there's a few pieces to this. Of course, we're right downtown. We have the Rogers Center where the Jays begin to play games in September. And so every now and then we'll have 30,000 people who are going into or coming out of a baseball game when the festival is on. And of course, with all of the attendant traffic hassles that that may bring. The city is just working as it usually does. People need to get to work and from work wherever they're going. And we're shutting down a stretch of King Street for four days to put on Festival Street, invite everybody into the festival. but we realized that has an impact too. So we try to do it in the most thoughtful way possible, working with Citi, with the TTC, with other partners to make sure that that shutdown happens in the most low-stress way possible for everyone. But also we realized after a certain number of years, we opened the light box in 2010, and the orbit of the festival moved down around the light box from up in Yorkville where it was before. But what that meant was we had to rethink how people move around the festival. And so we made a conscious decision to contain the footprint of the festival to what we feel is a walkable radius. So, you know, you can get from any one festival venue to any other festival venue within, I would say, about 10 to 12 minutes walk. You don't have to get into a car. Right. And that helps us deliver a festival that is not only more environmentally sustainable, but just more convenient for people as well. So that was very much thinking in relation to the traffic of the city, which, you know, we talk to developers, we talk to the city. We know that the construction is not going to stop anytime soon. It will be going on for years or decades to come. There's new transit being put in downtown as well. All of these things are going to obstruct street lanes and we have to work around that in the most thoughtful way possible. It's very European to really create a more pedestrianized experience. And all over the world, you have cities that do have, you know, centers that are, you know, squares and centers and streets that are, you know, dedicated all year round for pedestrians. And we're, you know, the John Street corridor was proposed many, many years ago. Hasn't happened yet. Hasn't happened yet. Our fingers are still crossed. And we live in hope and we would like to see something like that happen. I think it would help really just enliven the cultural draw of that district as well. We'll be launching an official content market next year as well. And we're also looking to keep that within the same footprint as well. So we'll have a lot more industry delegates coming in every year, but we don't want them to be in cars necessarily if they don't need to be. So we hope that that will also stay walkable. So lots of evolution happening, the content market. Tell me a little bit more about that. Sure. So we have informally over many years helped to facilitate a whole lot of business that happens during our festival. It's a public festival and most of what happens is people go to see movies just for enjoyment. But there's also a lot of businesses being done on the sidelines of that festival. Buyers and sellers of films, investors, talent, financiers, all of those different people come together in Toronto every year. We've estimated the value of those deals that are done informally at about $70 million annually.$70 million? Yes. If you read the trade publications in our sector, you would see the announcement of this film being sold or that film being sold, roughly $70 million a year. With the official content market, that will grow. We project to about $400 million in sales every year. We will more than double the number of delegates who come in to do business from about 5,000 right now every year. Majority of those North American to about 12,000 and will increase the proportion of international delegates from overseas as well. Particularly in Asia and Europe where we think there are big, big industries that don't come as often. But making it an official market gives us the opportunity to do more. Federal government has helped us with that with a $23 million investment over three years, which has been super helpful and will allow us to build and launch the market, which we will in time be looking to make self-sustaining. It's really exciting. So you've got plans. We sure do. Yes. So fast forward another 50 years and what do you think TIFF will be in 50 years? And what do you think the impact, how do you expect that to evolve? Such an important ingredient, I think, to what Toronto is today and what it means to bring culture and economy and cross-border relationships together in a really fantastic way. So what does 50 years look like? I'm going to have to guess because our sector changes so fast. Maybe the world changes fast generally. But, you know, since the Lightbox opened only 15 years ago, we've made the transition from analog 35 millimeter prints to nearly fully digital. Every stage of the production and presentation line, that change has happened. Streaming services have arrived. Social media, in terms of how promotion of movies and shows happen, has changed everything. The fact that TV shows and movies are nearly indistinguishable at some levels as well. The same directors, the same writers, the same actors are in your favorite shows as in your favorite movies. Now, all of that's happened just in the last 15 years. So the next 50, you know, hard to imagine. What I can say, but I think some confidence, is that people will still be taking in moving image stories. I think that what we've seen with all of these technological changes is actually that the appetite to watch stories unfold on screen has actually grown. More people are spending more time watching stuff. It might be on their phone. It may be TikTok videos. There's short form narrative content that audiences in China and South Korea are watching in big ways now that may come to North America as well. There's streaming services that people are into. YouTube is such a big player now, which I think was never really imagined 10 years ago, 10, 15 years ago either. So all of these things I think will continue to evolve and we can't say exactly what path they'll take. But I think the human appetite to see stories and to see visual stories, I don't think that's going away anytime soon. The creators of those stories, I think it's another thing we have to think about in terms of 50 years. I think the boundaries between a creator and a consumer have really begun to blur a little bit. The same people who are rabidly consuming content online or making their own stuff. Social media is the best example of that. Influencers, that whole dynamic has, I think, made it more of a level playing field. Not exactly, because obviously you still need skills and talent to be able to succeed as an influencer. Not everybody gets to get a million likes on TikTok. So I think we'll have to keep an eye on that as well to see what that leads to over the next 10, 20, 50 years. And then I think the global economy will be interesting as well. I think phenomena like K-pop demon hunters, like Parasite winning the Best Picture Oscar, both from South Korea. Yes. I think we're going to see more of that. I can't say for sure where the next South Korea will arise. But I would say keep an eye out on Southeast Asia, countries like Malaysia and Vietnam. Keep an eye on Nigeria, which already has massive production of movies and TV shows. And Nigerian pop music has found its way into pop music generally with Burna Boy and musicians like that. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw similar things happening with moving image stories. So the globalization is going to be a factor we'll see in 50 years. the constant evolution of content, maybe further blurring of the boundaries between consumers and creators. And that's as much as I can possibly imagine. Well, that was a lot to imagine. Globalization, technology, a changing youth culture, you know, the blurring of relationships that we've held on to for a long time and new players coming onto the field. So, I mean, we really can't imagine what's to come, but it sounds like, Cameron, with you at the helm and that ever-present curiosity that it's going to be pretty exciting. I'm excited about it. Yeah. Thank you so, so much for being with us today. And I'm sure that our listeners are going to love this because that was an incredible conversation and TIFF is part of the fabric of this city. And I don't know it would look the same without it. So thank you. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. That's all for this episode of Toronto Talks. Subscribe to be one of the first to hear our next episode, a conversation about how businesses should go about AI adoption and how they shouldn't. You need to understand what it is, what it is not to then decide to trust it. So because we're not educated, we don't trust it. And because we don't trust it, we don't implement it. Keep talking, Toronto. Our voice drives meaningful change.