Windsor International Film Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary
Along with the famous and star-studded film festivals, from Cannes to Sundance, BFI London to the Berlinale, there are countless other minor festivals around the world, some of them significant, some little more than small-town screenings in a public meeting room. One of the most ambitious and dynamic is the annual film festival held in Windsor, Ontario, an event celebrating 20 years this month. It is the second-largest volunteer-run film festival in Canada.
Windsor, a medium-sized industrial city across the border from Detroit, Michigan, has a small but vibrant arts community which came together in 2004 to put together a makeshift film festival in the city’s downtown core, expecting it to be a one-time event. Instead, it expanded and became an annual, 11-day-long celebration of film, taking in a wide and diverse selection of cinema from around the world, and even became a destination for actors and filmmakers willing to address audiences and answer questions about current screenings. The festival now sells over 48,000 box office tickets each year and draws visitors to Windsor for the sole purpose of attending the film festival.
“The end of the movie is the beginning of the conversation.” This quote from Mark Boscariol, founder of the Windsor Film Festival, appears regularly on festival materials and promotions, as well as on the wall art that decorates alleyways between the venues. The slogan is apt; there is, in fact, a great deal of movie chat and camaraderie at the festival.
It spills out into the street, within queues and among attendees walking from one screening to the next, as the festival has expanded from its original, carefully renovated 1920 Art Deco cinema to add a nearby auditorium and a former military armoury in which to screen films.
This year’s festival presented 213 feature films from 42 countries, including major new or pre-release productions such as the Trump bio The Apprentice and body horror hit The Substance. The festival offers something for all tastes; its board selects an array of interesting but obscure films from around the world, noteworthy international productions that parallel the selections of Cannes or TIFF, and documentaries on every issue from the pertinent to the merely amusing.
This year’s event also presented an Iranian drama that was banned in Iran and required the director to flee imprisonment; an experimental Covid-era drama so purposely slow it caused some of the audience to walk out; and just for fun, midnight screenings of classic horror films.
The late-October festival joins others, including the prestigious Toronto Film Festival, in promoting the Canadian film industry, an especially welcome endeavour as Windsor commercial cinemas neglect Canadian, foreign, or indie productions in favour of popular Hollywood releases.
The festival boasts the largest proportion of French-language films in Canada, including film events in French-speaking Quebec. Windsor will also host a local short film competition and has recently formed a partnership with National Geographic to screen its documentaries.
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