Big Names, Slow Sales At Toronto Film Festival

Film aficionados and industry insiders awoke Sunday morning to a cold dreary overcast day that seemed to reflect the overall mood at the Toronto International Film Festival. “We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quality of films here, but there hasn’t been anything we’ve seen with broad commercial appeal just yet,” Lionsgate production head Tom Ortenberg said.

At one point, it appeared that potential buyers were fleeing the preview of the school shooting drama In Bloom, but it turns out they were not running from the dark drama, but rather running to one of the hottest properties, “Nothing Is Private”. This disturbing drama is directed by Alan Ball and looks into the sexual abuse that a 13 year old Arab American girl suffers.

One of the most notable sales during the festival was Helen Hunt’s directorial debut with Then She Found Me, which raked in an impressive $3 million between distribution rights in the US and Canada. This romantic comedy is about a troubled woman, and the buyers seemed to validate the positive buzz it generated.

With an extremely heavy concentration of political commentaries, it was not surprising to find conflicting opinions about the same movie. And the slow sales reflected a lack of interest in such controversial projects. However, sales did pick up as the festival drew to a close, so we can only hope that the late boost pushed it over the edge as both a financial and cultural success.