Toronto Festival Title Changes Reflect Year-Round Focus

TORONTO – Piers Handling continues to cement his hold on the Toronto International Film Festival.

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The marquee Canadian festival on Wednesday announced Cameron Bailey will now serve as artistic director of TIFF, after three years ago being named co-director of the annual September film festival alongside Handling.

Bailey now takes the same title held by Noah Cowan, who in 2008 exchanged the festival co-director title to become artistic director of Bell Lightbox, the festival's future and now year-round home.

Bailey and Cowan now sharing artistic director duties leaves Handling as the sole director of TIFF, as well as CEO.

Bailey will continue to oversee the overall programming and operations at the annual September festival, working with Handling and other fest programmers.

At the same time, Handling insisted Wednesday that the title shake-up reflected on-going efforts to align the annual film festival with Bell Lightbox and its year-round activities.

“While Cameron’s responsibilities remain unchanged, I believe that his new title will support our efforts to streamline and integrate our programming across all divisions within the organization,” Handling said in a statement.

“Over the past 18 months, the programming heads have been working towards finding ways to become further integrated when looking at our curatorial efforts throughout the year,” Bailey added with his own statement.