Crave Stocks Up on International Film Festival Titles

Bell Media’s streaming service Crave has inked a deal with the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to distribute feature films that debuted at last year’s festival.

Eleven feature films that celebrated their world premieres at TIFF 2019 will be distributed across Canada via the service. The new partnership is called TIFF Selects. It is now live, with eight films currently available for viewing.

The Canadian and international films that have been offered the opportunity to premiere on Crave as part of TIFF Selects represent a richness of voices, perspectives and insights from established filmmakers, as well as emerging directorial talent. Each of the films selected to be part of TIFF Selects is an official selection from the festival.

The TIFF Selects films currently streaming on Crave are: The Antenna (Orçun Behram, Turkey), The County (Grímur Hákonarson, Iceland/Denmark/Germany/France), Disco (Jorunn Myklebust Syversen, Norway), Jallikattu (Lijo Jose Pellissery, India), Lina from Lima (María Paz González, Chile/Argentina/Peru), Our Lady of the Nile (Atiq Rahimi, France/Belgium/Rwanda), Sole (Carlo Sironi, Italy/Poland) and Stories From The Chestnut Woods (Gregor Božič, Slovenia/Italy).

The three films slated for upcoming debuts on the service are: Antigone (Sophie Deraspe, Canada), which is set for February; Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band (Daniel Roher, Canada), scheduled for the spring; and The Twentieth Century (Matthew Rankin, Canada), which will bow in March.

“TIFF’s partnership with Bell Media and Crave, Canada’s own world-class streaming service, is good for business and furthers TIFF’s mission to showcase exceptional cinema to audiences across the country,” said Joana Vicente, TIFF’s executive director and co-head. “TIFF is thrilled to make this opportunity available to both the filmmakers and viewers. Together, we hope to grow the TIFF Selects collection over the coming years.”

“It was important for us to expand the presence of TIFF—an iconic Canadian cultural institution —on Crave,” said Randy Lennox, president of Bell Media. “One of Crave’s cultural mandates is acquiring, curating, and distributing the best content in the world, and we’re thrilled to continue that momentum through this new partnership with TIFF.”