TIFF.25 as seen by
For the anniversary edition TIFF.25, four illustrators were invited to reinterpret the festival through their own visual universes. Saddo, Maria Surducan, Tuan Nini and Maks Graur have created a series of alternative posters that start from the same idea — TIFF seen through the eyes of artists — and move in very different directions: from the memory of first encounters with cinema, to a city lit up by screenings, from imagination turning clouds into screens, to illustrated worlds where the festival takes on new forms.
The series opens a dialogue between film, illustration and the deeply personal way in which each artist relates to TIFF: as a place of discovery, nostalgia, escape and lasting encounters.
It’s the scene in Piața Mare, where you have the outdoor screening, approached in a more graphic-painterly style. Especially since this is a variant poster, I wanted to illustrate something more “painterly/aesthetic” than “conceptual-cerebral.”
The statement here is about how the festival brings “light” and energy into the city. There are also 24 little stars in the sky, symbolizing the past editions. Of course, no one is actually going to count them — it’s just an insider symbol.
I tried to go back to my first experiences with TIFF, as a poor student, when I managed to get a fake badge to get into screenings — or even further back, to the times when I would secretly watch horror films or steal sci-fi books from bookshops.
I tried to create a tribute to outsiders, double-crossers, young people who don’t have money and have to sneak into cinemas, forge badges — and I made this collage of references to iconic films with characters on the margins of society: Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, Bresson’s Pickpocket, children watching films in fascination, Hugo Cabret mesmerized by Georges Méliès’ films, or the child in Cinema Paradiso. There are also references to Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, and I also wanted to include details and scenes from La Chimera, Parasite, Slumdog Millionaire, Shoplifters and many others — but I simply couldn’t fit everything into a single illustration.
Two dreamers look up at the clouds. The clouds become screens, imagination becomes film, and film becomes a new way of seeing.
