TIFF facts and figures — so far
Rise in ticket sales: Up until yesterday afternoon, over 20,600 tickets had been sold, compared to 20,000 by the same day last year. Box-office hit: Chock-a-block screening for John Sayles’s «Casa de los Babys,» tickets for which were sold out by 9.30 a.m. Flat venue: The new screening venue, the Aristotelion Cinema, which allows entry only to festival card-holders has not been very successful. People seem to prefer being where the action is, at the old port warehouses. Splash: Two films from the New Horizons section have made a splash: «The Return» by Russia’s Andrey Zvyagintsev (Golden Lion award in Venice) and «Spring, Summer, Fall… Winter, Spring» by South Korea’s Kim Ki-duk. Tragic coincidences: The leading actors of two feature films died just after their films were finished: 16-year-old Vladimir Garin drowned in the lake shown in «The Return» and 28-year-old Mehmet Emin Toprak from «Distant» died in a car crash just a few days after the final cut. Opening: The Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art inaugurated Michael Snow’s exhibition «Selections from the Spectrum» on Monday.
