‘It seems like every year there is a different mood about the festival from filmmakers: it’s either going to kill your films or it’s great for them.’ So says Colin Brunton, head of the Canadian Film Center’s Feature Film Project, who has brought five features – with distributors attached – to the Toronto festival since 1989, and has been privy to the agonizing over strategies that are part and parcel of the behind-the-screen festival experience.

While it is an unofficial marketplace, Canadian distributors are unanimous in touting the import the festival carries. For the 298 films the Toronto International Film Festival is showcasing this year, Sales and Industry Office head Christine Yankou estimates there will be 1,000 registered producers, distributors, marketers, programmers, agents, and about 300 buyers and sellers on hand.

While the support is evident in the numbers, distributors are the first to admit the festival is an ideal venue to launch some films and a fatal one for others.

To festival or not to festival? It is a question distributors face each year when they make their selection of films to be entered into this movie event, known primarily for its American business connections and competitive films.

Once a distributor decides a film is appropriate festival material – a deliberation that includes assessing the merit and strength of the picture – there are a number of risks that threaten the outing with failure. In order to avoid the wide range of pitfalls, distributors juggle priorities that include proper program placement and timing of the release date, both of which must be tailored to the film’s budget and its audience.

If a film is big (such as a studio picture) the festival can do little to affect its future, except perhaps to profile talent. It can also work to generate either poor or favorable word of mouth, which can have some influence on the film’s general release.

It’s the smaller or independent titles that stand to gain or lose the most.

Alliance Releasing vp Tony Cianciotta says one of the greatest advantages for small titles is exposure at a fraction of the cost of a publicity and advertising campaign.

But, as he points out, the pay-off for good exposure can be reduced returns when it comes time to release the film to the general public. ‘The festival has been so successful,’ he says, ‘that for some of the very small pictures the attendance is so good that it exhausts the audience.’ If the film is deemed too small to withstand a festival audience draw on box office, Cianciotta pronounces it a lost cause. ‘Let’s face it, the film was heading, for lack of better words, for disaster.’

The issue of theater placement can be a contentious one between Canadian filmmakers and their distributors.

Brunton says one of the problems is that filmmakers want to make a huge splash but distributors want to keep the films ‘in small theaters because only so many people are going to pay to see our films.’

The chance that a small film will take off at the festival is the tradeoff, and it happens often enough that distributors dream of it each September. Roger and Me, The Icicle Thief, Diva, Priest and Exotica are some well-documented examples.

‘That’s what entices us to put some of these small films in the festival in the first place,’ says Cianciotta.

Brian Glisserman, senior vp of Cineplex Odeon Films sees the most significant risk when playing the festival circuit as losing a winner in the mad shuffle. If a film is at its infancy and being presented for the first time, he argues, ‘there is the potential that a film will not find acceptance from buyers and press alike and that may just be because of volume as opposed to the quality of the film. It might get relegated to something they are not interested in.’

Program placement can be the ruin of a title too, adds Cianciotta, a lesson he learned the hard way. Last year, when Alliance Releasing had the option of placing Atom Egoyan’s Cannes festival winner Exotica as a gala, it opted for Perspective Canada. Why?

Cianciotta recalls what happened with another Alliance/ Egoyan film, The Adjuster. It was 1991 and Alliance worked with the festival programmers to screen the film as a gala. ‘The Adjuster was an example of a particular art film shown at a gala with a very negative word of mouthit was a disaster,’ says Ciancottia.

It didn’t help the film’s chances that it was released directly after the festival was over, while the sour response was still fresh.

Alternately, with Exotica, ‘we purposely kept it away from any type of gala because we wanted the cinephile to see this film and create a good word of mouth. It was a marketing strategy that in the end paid off,’ he says.

Rene Malo, ceo of Montreal-based Malofilm, does not entirely see eye-to-eye with Cianciotta’s strategy. ‘Ninety percent of the time you want to have the biggest exposure possible, and the biggest exposure is galas.’

Malo says there’s little difference between gala-goers and the crowd at other screenings. ‘Sure people are more critical for the gala because each night there are big American movies. So you have to be careful of that. At the same time, it’s very tough to attract attention if you are not in a gala.’

Because Exotica was already a known title by festival time, Malo agrees the strategy to place it in Perspective Canada was a good one.

Another priority on the distributor’s agenda is setting up the best possible release date for a festival title. The heat generated by the festival hype machine can either effectively burn a title if it is released too soon after the event or propel it into the general public’s eye.

Distributors agree the bottom line when considering the release of a title in the shadow of the festival is whether the title is small and will appeal to the film buff crowd or whether the title is big enough to reach beyond the buffs. If the film is of the smaller variety, word is there should be a wait of at least two weeks and no more than two months.

Andy Myers, vp distribution at Norstar, is planning to release Stephen Williams’ Soul Survivor and the American indie Living in Oblivion by the end of September. He is banking on some pre-festival exposure to build on until the release date.

‘Cinephiles,’ he says, ‘tend to pig out so to speak at the festival and their appetite for filmed entertainment immediately thereafter is satiated.’ However, because Living is currently in release in the States he plans on ‘using the festival basically to platform the filmmaker.’

With Soul Survivor, because the film has been around – i