Younger audiences are reshaping the Toronto International Film Festival

Winter is approaching Toronto. There is already a hint of it in the air, with temperatures hovering around 15 to 17 degrees Celsius. It is pleasant weather for walking through the city with a light jacket.

And around Reitman Square on King Street West, the neighbourhood remains wrapped in the atmosphere of cinema.

On Saturday, the area around TIFF Lightbox was bustling. Some people had festival badges hanging around their necks, others carried screening tickets. Filmgoers, industry professionals and tourists mingled around Reitman Square and the surrounding streets.

Some emerged from screenings discussing the films they had just watched. Others checked schedules for their next show, while tourists stopped to take photographs in front of festival installations. Cafés and restaurants nearby were similarly busy. Conversations in different languages could be heard everywhere — a reflection of Toronto's multicultural character.

Yet the crowd also offered a glimpse of something changing at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Many young moviegoers were not there merely for a glimpse of a celebrity. They were lining up to watch films from different countries, in different languages, telling stories far removed from mainstream Hollywood.

The stars were certainly here. Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Cynthia Erivo, Naomi Watts, Michelle Yeoh and BLACKPINK's Lisa were among the familiar faces appearing at festival events and on the red carpet.

But as the 51st Toronto International Film Festival reaches its final day on Sunday, another picture has become increasingly clear: alongside star-driven films and major productions, independent, international and non-English-language cinema has gained significant space at TIFF.

At the time of writing, Sunday's final-day screenings and events are still under way across Toronto. The 11-day festival, which began on 10 September, concludes later tonight.

TIFF's Chief Programming Officer Anita Lee had pointed to this shift even before the festival began.

She told Reuters that a significant demographic change was taking place among cinema audiences, with younger people returning to theatres and seeking films beyond the Hollywood mainstream. This new generation of moviegoers, she said, is increasingly interested in diverse and international stories.

The programme over the past 11 days has reflected that shift.

From opening film Being Heumann to Cynthia Erivo's Prima Facie, Alex Gibney's Musk, Peter Farrelly's I Play Rocky, Chris Rock's Misty Green, Jesse Eisenberg's The Debut and the Lisa documentary Always Lalisa, the festival has brought together films that differ widely in subject, form and origin.

The programme has also explored the legacy of Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, the lives of young Ukrainians during the war, migration across the Mediterranean, labour organising and the experiences of women in Iran.

The result is a festival that has not been defined solely by celebrity or awards-season anticipation. It has also become a screen for some of the world's most urgent social and political realities.

Lee told Reuters that TIFF could not ignore the complicated geopolitical world in which films are being made and watched. The festival, she said, aims to create a space for conversation while keeping cinema, artists and filmmakers at its centre.

The expanding international character of TIFF has been particularly visible in the increased presence of Chinese and Chinese-language cinema.

Reuters reported that six Chinese-language and China-produced films were selected this year, compared with three last year. Chinese-language productions from Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia have also been part of the festival.

Among the notable titles are Bai Xue's It's My Time, starring Michelle Yeoh, Peter Chan's The Road Not Taken and Zhou Jing's A Girl Unknown.

Yeoh said in Toronto that Chinese cinema could potentially reach global audiences in the way Korean and Japanese films have done in recent years. Chinese actor Fan Bingbing was also honoured with a Special Tribute Award at this year's festival.

Another striking example of TIFF's Asian reach was Always Lalisa.

Directed by Sue Kim, the documentary follows Lisa through a crucial period in her career, including her solo album Alter Ego, her acting debut in The White Lotus and preparations for her solo Coachella performance.

Lisa attended the TIFF premiere herself, drawing large numbers of excited fans to the red carpet.

The range of subjects at this year's festival has been equally striking.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney's nearly four-hour documentary Musk examines Elon Musk's extraordinary economic, technological and political influence.

Gibney has said the film is not intended simply as a biography of Musk. It also examines what happens when enormous power becomes concentrated in the hands of a small number of technology figures. Musk has publicly criticised the documentary.

Cynthia Erivo's Prima Facie, meanwhile, deals with sexual violence, consent and the justice system.

Erivo plays Tessa, a successful criminal defence lawyer accustomed to representing men accused of sexual offences. After she is sexually assaulted by a colleague, she is forced to confront the same legal system from the other side — as a complainant.

Directed by Susanna White and adapted from Suzie Miller's acclaimed stage play, the film has become one of TIFF's prominent conversation-starters around sexual violence and justice.

The festival opened with Being Heumann, directed by Oscar-winning CODA filmmaker Siân Heder.

The film tells the story of Judy Heumann, one of the pioneers of the disability rights movement in the United States, with British actor Ruth Madeley in the title role.

It also revisits the historic 1977 protest in San Francisco, when disability rights activists staged a 26-day occupation of a federal building while pressing the US government to implement Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

TIFF's documentary selection has pushed this international focus even further.

James Marcus Haney's Black Sunflowers follows young Ukrainians living between the realities of war and civilian life.

Mayken Baird's Edward Said: Between Worlds revisits the life and intellectual legacy of Palestinian-American scholar and literary critic Edward Said.

Sine Plambech's Rescue looks at migration across the Mediterranean, while Afsaneh Salari's Tehran, Under the Skin examines women's lives in Iran through the country's beauty industry.

Veteran documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple's Union Town, meanwhile, turns its attention to labour organising in New York.

Taken together, these films illustrate what TIFF's programming leadership has described as an effort to reach a younger, more internationally minded audience.

As TIFF moved towards its closing weekend, attention inevitably shifted to films that could remain in the conversation during the international awards season.

Peter Farrelly's I Play Rocky has been among the talked-about titles. The film revisits the remarkable story behind Sylvester Stallone's struggle to make Rocky.

Farrelly already has history at Toronto: his Green Book won the TIFF People's Choice Award in 2018 before going on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Jesse Eisenberg's The Debut, featuring Julianne Moore, has also attracted attention, as has Rosalind Eleazar's performance in Chris Rock's Misty Green.

Mike Leigh's Tender Loving Care and Elsinore, starring Andrew Scott, are among other titles appearing on critics' festival selections.

What has been notable, however, is the absence — at least through much of the festival — of a single film completely dominating the conversation. Instead, attention has been spread across films of very different genres, countries and scales.

The change at Toronto has not been limited to what appears on screen.

This year TIFF formally launched TIFF: The Market, marking a significant expansion of the festival's role in the international film business.

The inaugural market ran from 10 to 16 September at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

According to Screen International, 7,010 delegates from 92 countries registered for the first edition. There were 238 exhibitors and 1,473 buyers, while organisers reported more than 116,000 total visits across market sessions and events. The original registration target had been 6,000.

The response from the industry has been mixed.

Some participants praised the opportunities for sales and new business connections. Others said there were fewer market-ready projects than at established marketplaces such as Cannes. Long queues for accreditation badges also caused frustration early in the event.

Even so, turning the business activity that has long surrounded TIFF into a formal market represents an important step in the festival's ambition to become a bigger global hub not only for showing films, but also for financing, buying and selling them.

As the festival approached its end, the spotlight on Saturday shifted back towards Canadian stories.

Sean Menard's documentary Run Terry Run premiered in Toronto, revisiting one of the most enduring stories in Canadian history.

After losing his right leg to cancer, 21-year-old Terry Fox set out in 1980 on his Marathon of Hope, attempting to run across Canada with a prosthetic leg to raise money for cancer research.

The new documentary uses previously unseen material to revisit that journey. Fox's brother Darrell attended Saturday's screening.

Another Canadian icon is at the centre of Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend, about Formula One driver Gilles Villeneuve. The film was screened on Saturday and is also part of Sunday's final-day programme.

Bangladesh, too, remained present during the closing weekend.

Rubaiyat Hossain's The Difficult Bride had its third Toronto screening on Saturday, 19 September. After becoming the first Bangladeshi feature selected for the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival, the film came to Toronto as part of TIFF's Centrepiece programme.

At the time this report is being filed, TIFF's final day is still unfolding.

Screenings are continuing across Toronto from morning into the evening, while the festival's final awards and special presentations are among Sunday's main attractions.

The People's Choice Award remains particularly significant because of TIFF's long association with the Academy Awards. Previous winners including Green Book and Nomadland later won the Oscar for Best Picture.

But whatever film ultimately leaves Toronto with the biggest prize, the larger story of TIFF 2026 appears to go beyond the awards.

Conversations with organisers and moviegoers towards the end of the festival suggest that celebrity remains an important part of Toronto's appeal.

The stars were here — from Penélope Cruz and Michelle Yeoh to Cynthia Erivo and Lisa.

But alongside them were young Ukrainians living through war, the intellectual legacy of Edward Said, migrants crossing the Mediterranean, labour organisers, Iranian women and a new generation of filmmakers from across Asia and beyond.

That is perhaps the clearest image of the 51st Toronto International Film Festival as it heads towards its conclusion.

The red carpets remain. The stars still draw crowds. But TIFF's screen is becoming more international and more diverse — and a younger generation of moviegoers increasingly appears willing to look beyond familiar faces to discover unfamiliar stories from the other side of the world.