Oct. 12, 2025

By Damien Houston

I didn’t end up going to TIFF 2025 this year so I decided to ask friends of mine how their experience was since buying tickets for the event was just a horrible experience all around and I’m not the only one that feels that way. In a conversation I had with fellow film buff Amir Pairawan about the Ticketmaster process since I woke up an hour later than when tickets when on sale the morning of August 21st. Amir did all of their ticket buying on Ticketmaster but sometimes it was banning their WI-FI and when I mentioned that ticket master is bad for that kind of thing they told me “The only reason It did that was because I was searching the movies on the TIFF website and it would redirect me to Ticketmaster”. Personally I could go on and on about Ticketmaster and how horrible it is to buy tickets for events but i’ll leave that to another time.

About the actual experience itself I asked Zhansaya Khaidarova about her time at the festival since she’s really passionate about film and a former film student now Media Communications student who also went in 2024 so I asked about the differences between this year and the last year for her. “This year I personally think the films are better compared to last year and there was so many films I wanted to see this year but I didn’t get to see them all”

Which is true counting the films this year for TIFF 50 had a total of 291 films compared to last year number of 280 films

She also mentioned while the films are better this year there are less freebies that they give out which can really hinder the experience of some TIFF goers there was the Criterion Closest this year which let film buffs live out the dream of picking out their favourite movies like many stars and directors have the in past.

Photo From Reddit User u/Aerogirl2021 of the truck at TIFF this year

The problem being is that the lines are way longer this year compared to last year because of this leading to more foot traffic in the general area. It seems like with TIFF the freebies are getting less and less but the selection of movies keep growing and growing.

Next year i’ll try to definitely set an alarm so I don’t miss out.

Contact Info

Amir Pairawan

apairawan@gmail.com

Zhansaya Khaidarova

Zhakokhaid@gmail.com