Last month, our programming director, Kerstin Larson, and artistic director, Cara Ogburn, attended the Toronto International Film Festival and shared these takeaways about the value of attending this festival annually to fuel our year-round and film festival programming and to maintain Milwaukee Film’s stature in our field. (In Law & Order voice:) These are their stories.

When it comes to attending the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), each of us has a different focus in attending based on our programmatic oversight (though we share and swap when needed as the boundaries of space and time don’t always let us pack our schedule with just “our” stuff). While Kerstin is looking to find great Worldviews films for the next Milwaukee Film Festival (MFF), Cara is focused on previewing the end-of-year wider releases that will dominate our cinema screens come November and December.

KERSTIN REPORTS:

TIFF is a veritable smorgasbord for the best in international cinema. I got to sample morsels from countries like Sweden, Iran, Australia, and Indonesia. I’m always on the hunt for more African cinema for the Milwaukee Film Festival (MFF) and with the incredible stories I saw from the continent, I have more than enough to choose from. Viewing these films with an audience is so important as we all well know. There were more than a handful of screenings where we were all quietly sniffling to ourselves and of course there was plenty of laughing and cheering as well.

CARA REPORTS:

It’s definitely better to feel out our end-of-year tentpoles with screenings filled with a real audience. This year, I wouldn’t have known exactly how hard and who would laugh at the riotous new Martin McDonough film, Wild Horse Nine (opens November 6) without seeing this with a full room or the gasping at the twists of Anton Corbijn’s A Talent for Murder, an adaptation of Joanna Murray-Smith’s stage play Switzerland, which our “High on Highsmith” film series celebrated during last Fall’s Milwaukee staging at Renaissance (opens October 23). And there’s a few films still seeking US distribution that I hope will get picked up and dated for us to be able to bring them to Milwaukee as well.

This year was TIFF”s first year presenting an official “market” (an opportunity for films to gain financing or backing prior to premiering and for films to be acquired). Though this aspect of the event is less critical for Milwaukee Film’s business, the market adds more buzz to the city and more of a sense of the fullness and global nature of our field. Walking through the exhibition hall floor filled with sales agencies and financiers from around the globe, it was exciting to see Wisconsin’s new production incentives represented on the map at the Film USA booth.

And, for both of us, no Festival is just to see films (though seeing films with a room full of others and with great projection is important). It’s also about connecting, re-connecting, and meeting anew with our peers in exhibition and our partners in distribution and criticism.

For Cara, highlights of this included a dim sum gathering presented by Janus with our professional development organization, Art House Convergence together with their Canadian sister org, NICE (Network of Independent Canadian Exhibitors) where she chatted with a number of distributors about their coming slates and future acquisitions, and attending a brunch presented by Rotten Tomatoes, where she connected with several film critics who have attended our Festival or who we hope to have attend in the future.

And, then, for both Cara and Kerstin, a final highlight was a fairly small dinner organized by our friends at Searchlight Pictures where we were able to celebrate our shared past and future wins with their films and get into deep conversation over great Italian fare!

In all of these encounters it is clear that Milwaukee Film (and our cinemas) are well respected and valuable to the field as well as that the field is on a strong upward swing.