· 1 min read
TIFF: ten days when downtown Toronto stops behaving normally
Street closures, venue clusters and a city running on premiere schedules. What to know if you need a car during the festival.
The Toronto International Film Festival turns a section of downtown into something closer to a campus for ten days in September. Streets close, venues within a few blocks run overlapping schedules, and normal assumptions about how long it takes to get somewhere stop applying.
King Street changes
Sections of King Street West are given over to the festival, which removes routes and pickup options that exist for the rest of the year. A driver who has not worked the festival will attempt a route that no longer exists and lose fifteen minutes discovering it.
Venues are close together and that is the problem
Because the main venues are within walking distance of each other, the same few blocks absorb every arrival and departure. A car moving two hundred metres between venues can take longer than a car crossing the city.
Premiere timing is unforgiving
Red carpet arrivals run to a schedule with real consequences for being late. Those bookings are held with the vehicle in position well in advance, and we treat the timing as fixed.
If you are just going to see a film
Get dropped a few blocks out and walk in. It is faster, and it avoids a pickup zone that will be full. For the return, agree a point away from the venue cluster before you go in — phone signal in a crowd of that density is unreliable.
Book far ahead
Every good vehicle in Toronto is committed during the festival. Enquiries in August are late. See event transport and production transport.
