Spanning 10 days and up to 400 films, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) attracts 250,000 attendees and brings some of the biggest names, industry titans, and glamour to the city. Away from the silver screens, behind the scenes, staging the festival is a massive task, and the conditions that the workers operate under have come under scrutiny. 

Even after last year’s Hollywood writer and actor strikes for better pay and protection from artificial intelligence, TIFF laid off 12 full-time staff members. The film industry has also gained a reputation for exploitative practices, often characterized by power imbalances and ‘hope labour’ — under-compensated work performed with the expectation of future opportunities.

The Varsity spoke with U of T alumni at this year’s TIFF to understand the realities of working at one of the city’s most prestigious events. 

Behind the scenes: A positive outlook

Recent UTSC arts management graduate Polen Light has worked at TIFF for the past three years. He currently serves as a logistics coordinator, a role that involves developing festival policies, managing finances, and coordinating communications between departments. He has praised the festival both as a spectacle and as a great place to work.

“While TIFF may not be a perfect workplace, in my expansive arts and culture journey… I have found it to have the best work culture — [the] most meritocratic, most people-focused, and most self-improving,” Light said. 

He has found that “TIFF has had the best employer-employee relationship” — one characterized by a welcoming and friendly atmosphere with ample opportunities to learn and develop.

Some of the less-publicized work Light does at the festival includes producing Festival Street at David Pecaut Square: a four-day event featuring open-air film viewings, art exhibits, and fan zones that kick off the festival. Organizing Festival Street involves tasks such as screening the venues, sourcing security, and developing policies and procedures for staff, contractors, and events. 

Britt Rolston, a fourth-year arts management student at UTSC, has worked as a scanning representative at TIFF for three years, ensuring that ticket holders are admitted into viewings. She is employed specifically for the two weeks of the festival, usually working 5–6 hour shifts, and is just as enthusiastic about working at TIFF. “I loved it… It’s nice to have this experience,” she said.

TIFF offers vouchers to its workers every year for watching films, gaining early access to ticket selection, and receiving discounts for the CN Tower and Ripley’s Aquarium.

However, working at TIFF has its drawbacks. 

Rolston explains, “You get the odd person who’s like ‘Do you know who I am’?” While the entertainment industry can sometimes involve individuals using tenuous connections to belittle workers, this seems to be part and parcel of the field. For the most part though, she says “people are pretty chill and easygoing.”

As a current student, Rolston finds it challenging to balance her school work with her TIFF responsibilities. “I flat out told my professors, I won’t see you for two weeks, but I will come back with some stories of what celebrities walked past me and waved at me,” she said.

Lean times and cutbacks

Front-of-house employees, box office workers, and facilities attendants at the TIFF Bell Lightbox — the permanent cultural centre at the heart of the annual festival — are covered by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local B-173 union agreement. This agreement serves as the bargaining agent for all facilities attendants at the Lightbox. According to Light, almost nobody working at TIFF is under a union, which he said is “not shocking” in the world of film festivals.

These festivals often scale up massively for short, one-time events, which requires a flexible workforce. Due to the nature of these festivals, year-round employees are also frequently dependent on the economic success of previous years.

With the Hollywood strikes affecting 2023’s turnout, TIFF decided to reduce its full-time staff by 12 positions. TIFF’s vice-president of public relations and communications, Judy Lung, claimed in a statement that the after-effects of the pandemic lockdowns and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ strikes necessitated measures to “optimize our year-round and festival operations.” 

Despite the challenges, part-time annual workers and U of T alumni find a unique appeal in their TIFF experience. Light noted that some volunteers have been returning for 30 years. “It feels like a summer camp reunion every September for hundreds of us. It’s a very special kind of community and I am so glad to be experiencing it from my position,” he said.