On the afternoon before the opening night of Mongrel House – a seven-night, Mongrel Media-hosted TIFF event held at Toronto’s Campbell House Museum  – the distribution co received a phone call from the City of Toronto.

The memo: you aren’t allowed to play music beyond midnight at Campbell House.

Cue anxiety, despair and frantic phone calls.

With the clock ticking down until gates opened, Mongrel Media finally got the approval from the City to play music post-midnight, albeit with just an hour to spare.

These are the types of problems you encounter when, instead of hosting a one-night, 3000-person party at a conventional venue, you turn a Toronto museum and heritage site into a week-long film festival party, attended by an average of between 450 to 500 each night.

Mongrel House was the brainchild of Mongrel Media’s director of marketing Danish Vahidy, who began searching for TIFF party venues in January of this year. The strategy was three-fold: “We wanted to showcase the brand and create brand awareness, have guests enjoy themselves, and showcase the films themselves,” Vahidy explains.

By February, Mongrel had found Campbell House, a historically accurate museum home in the heart of downtown Toronto. The company approached the owners, who likely thought they were crazy, recalls operations manager and artistic curator Raji Aujla. But in the end, the museum staff and City of Toronto both worked with Mongrel to accommodate the company’s unusual request.

The result was the week-long street-side extravaganza, with each night promoting different films on Mongrel’s TIFF slate, which included Everything Will Be Fine, The Daughter, The Lobster, Brooklyn, Beeba Boys, Angry Indian Goddesses and Amy. The multi-day format allowed them to focus on one or two films per night, affording the chance to give greater attention to each of the films and increase the likelihood of talent attending.

“One of the challenges with doing a larger [one-off] event is that all the films are being represented at the same time, and getting cast and directors and talent there sometimes can be difficult,” noted Vahidy.

The Mongrel team also wanted to bring a new feel to each night’s party. “We didn’t want it to get stagnant, we wanted every night to be different. This year we were able to accomplish this through having specific brand-aligned partners, and so we shared guest lists with other entities, such as L’Oreal, Holt Renfrew and Universal Music, in Toronto that have the same types of mandate as us,” said Aujla.

With such a special venue, however, Aujla and Vahidy wanted to also ensure that film, company and partner promotion was subtle. To that end, they created small touches like drink coasters for all the films and original commissioned art for each film. 

“We wanted to give our films exposure in creative and innovative ways throughout the venue. All our films were branded in some way around the house, without having Mongrel House look like a trade show,” said Vahidy.

When creating the guest lists as well, care was taken that Mongrel House wasn’t a film industry-only kind of party. Mongrel’s marketing coordinator Jake Gorman was responsible for guest list invites and front door, as well as coordinating the presence of multiple Toronto food vendors positioned throughout the venue.

Both Raji and Vahidy agreed that the connections they have struck up with music, design and fashion industry members will benefit the films Mongrel will be releasing throughout the year.

Budget-wise, it was not a minor investment, notes Vahidy. But it was well worth it and the company is looking to lock Campbell House down for another few years. But first, some hard-earned rest for all those involved in making Mongrel House a home. “Getting the chance to sleep more than three hours will be a welcome reprieve,” said Vahidy.

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