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TIFF 2014 By The Numbers

 (Photo by George Pimentel/Getty Images)
(Photo by George Pimentel/Getty Images)

It’s all over! The awards have been handed out and the red carpets have been rolled up. After ten days of star-studded movie premieres, seemingly endless line-ups, and plenty of raucous late-night parties, the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival is officially a wrap.

With the dust still settling on fest, we thought now would be a good time to take a look back at the event. This is TIFF 2014 by the numbers.

Number of movies screened at the 2014 festival: 392

There were nearly 400 films from 79 countries at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival (284 features and 108 shorts). That’s up from the 366 films that played at the TIFF 2013, and close to an all-time record for the fest (an astounding 460 movies played in 1984).

Hollywood was out in full force at TIFF 2014. Family dramas like “The Judge” starring Robert Downey Jr. and “This is Where I Leave You” starring Jason Bateman and Tina Fey took top spots in the festival’s Gala Presentations programme. Future Oscar contenders like “Wild,” “Foxcatcher,” “The Imitation Game,” “Nightcrawler,” and “The Theory of Everything” also took center stage in Toronto. Hollywood films represented a surprisingly big portion of the TIFF 2014 line-up.

Looking for Canadian content? TIFF 2014 featured 77 Canuck films in all (31 feature films and 46 short films). Highlights included David Cronenberg’s “Maps to the Stars,” Xavier Dolan’s “Mommy,”  Jeffrey St. Jules’ ”Bang Bang Baby,” and Astron 6’s “The Editor.”

All in all, over 5,600 movies in all were submitted for consideration in TIFF 2014 (4,557 international titles and 1,114 Canadian films).

Longest movie at the 2014 festival: 338 minutes

If you played every movie at TIFF 2014 end-to-end, it would add up to more than 30,943 minutes worth of film. When you consider that each movie was screened multiple times during the fest (both for the public and for press and industry) you’re basically looking at several months worth of movies being played during the 10-day event. The longest movie at TIFF 2014? Director Lav Diaz’s 338 minute Filipino epic “From What is Before.”

Number of times a Benedict Cumberbatch-headlined film has won the TIFF People's Choice Award: 2

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Toronto has been very good to Benedict Cumberbatch over the past few years. The prolific English actor brought three films to TIFF 2013 (“August Osage County,” “The Fifth Estate,” and “12 Years a Slave”) and was named the unofficial “Man of the Festival” as a result. “12 Years a Slave” went on to win the coveted People’s Choice Award and secured Cumberbatch’s place as a Toronto favourite.

Cut to TIFF 2014 and Cumberbatch again found himself in the Canadian spotlight with “The Imitation Game,” a biopic centering on persecuted World War 2 codebreaker Alan Turing. The film took home the 2014 People’s Choice Award on the final day of the festival.

Same star, multiple movies

REUTERS/Mark Blinch
REUTERS/Mark Blinch

Although Benedict Cumberbatch only had one movie at this year’s festival, there were a number of other actors who took a cue from his 2013 showing and brought multiple movies to TIFF 2014. The big winners this year were rising stars Adam Driver, Anna Kendrick, and Chloe Grace Moretz. Each actor had three films at the festival: Driver had “This is Where I Leave You,” “Hungry Hearts,” and “While We’re Young”; Kendrick had “The Last Five Years,” “The Voices,” and “Cake”; and Moretz had “The Equalizer,” “Clouds of Sils Maria,” and “Laggies.”

(Photo by Angela Weiss/WireImage)
(Photo by Angela Weiss/WireImage)

Reese Witherspoon had a big year with “Wild” and “The Good Lie” (both directed by Canadian filmmakers), Julianne Moore brought “Maps to the Stars” and “Still Alice” to the fest. Acting legend Al Pacino also staged a mini-comeback by bringing two films to Toronto: “The Humbling” and “Manglehorn.” Other actors with multiple movies at TIFF this year include Mia Wasikowska (“Maps to the Stars,” “Madame Bovary”), John Cusack (“Maps to the Stars,” Love & Mercy”), and Keira Knightly (“The Imitation Game,” “Laggies”) to name a few.

There was so much to take in at TIFF 2014. The event has grown in leaps and bounds since it was founded nearly 40 years ago, and can only get better. We're eager to see how the organizers of the 2015 festival try to top this year!