Tonight is the start of the Toronto International Film Festival. As always getting tickets to the shows is a bit of a disaster. From what I can see there are several options each with its advantages:
1/ Purchase Gala Tickets
You get to see all the big movies but you don’t get to pick you movies and you may end but with bad seats if alot of corporate sponsors show up. Most of the Gala movies end up getting mainstream releases so you’re really just seeing them sooner.
2/ Visa Screening Tickets
Similar to the Gala tickets except you pick a time slot for the week. For example you can purchase 6pm or 9pm all week but you do not get to pick you movies. The Visa screening tickets seem to be a little less main stream from the Gala movies so you should see some interesting movies that would not be release otherwise.
3/Ticket Books
You can purchase a book of tickets and submit your movie tickets. It would seem that this whole selection process must be done manually ( sheet of paper ) and submitted to the TIFF office. Not a very easy process and you are not guaranteed to see the movies you want. In my opinion this whole process should be handled online. This seems to be the best process if you have some particular movies you want to see and a lot of spare time to run around the to TIFF office. You could try sell tickets that you get but don’t want…
4/Tickets Online
After all the ticket book and other tickets have been allocated the TIFF releases tickets online. You can purchase tickets that have not been sold out and get only the tickets you want. This is a great approach but the TIFF ticket purchase system is quite unreliable and make of the more popular movies sell out well before the online release.
6/ Rush Tickets
Basically you just show up for the movie and hope that people with tickets won’t. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. If you have a Bell Mobility mobile ( which I don’t ) you can also sign up for text messages on when the rush tickets will be available. Overall not the best option but useful if you really really must see a movie 😉
Overall the process is quite confusing and TIFF website provides some guidance but not al ot on the process. There are also web blast that you sign-up for on tickets that are still available. Another source for last minute tickets is Craigslist but the cost may be a lot more than the original ticket. Goodluck and enjoy the festival.