2016 Toronto International Film Festival (41st Edition) Diaries
When Is "Too Much" Getting Really Too Much?

by Henri Béhar

The excess of riches is unmatched worldwide, but "riches" may sometimes be overtaken by "excess".

True, you are offered six months' worth of (new) film fare, but only eleven days to (try and) watch them all. Good luck.

True, TIFF 2016 has selected the crème de la crème of what is being made throughout the world (kudos to the programmers).

True, TIFF has ventilated its selection into various sections - Gala Presentations, Special Presentations, Masters, Contemporary World Cinema, Discovery, Vanguard, Wavelengths, Docs (as in "Documentaries"), City to City, Midnight Madness (and I am forgetting a few), to which in recent years, it has added Platform ("Directors' Cinema Now") and, in keeping with the times, Prime Time, which focuses on television and makes room for the new players in the industry, Netflix and Amazon Studios.

Still... Nearly 400 works (shorts included) in 11 days?

So what can you do? You put the catalogue and the schedule in your backpack and decide to play it by ear.

In the next installments, you will find quick notes on the films I saw this year at TIFF.

You tell me if I got lucky.