Film festival season carries on in Toronto, despite a star-power outage

abcnews.go.com:

When SAG-AFTRA announced a strike this summer, Cameron Bailey, the longtime chief executive of the Toronto International Film Festival, dusted off his COVID-19 playbook

TORONTO — When the Hollywood actors union announced a strike this summer, Cameron Bailey, the longtime chief executive of the Toronto International Film Festival, dusted off his COVID-19 playbook.

For two years, TIFF, the largest film festival in North America, had maneuvered through pandemic editions that persevered, one way or another, through travel restrictions, social distancing measures and other upheavals. Now, TIFF was faced with a sudden eclipse of star power.

“This is the nature of running a festival,” Bailey says. “You have to respond to what the year gives you. We have good experience from recent years in terms of handling how the COVID pandemic affected us. And we put some of those same measures at the beginning of the news about the actors strike.”

Some performers are still coming to the 48th annual TIFF, which opens Thursday night with Hayao Miyazaki’s long-awaited “The Boy and the Heron.” Filmmakers will be present. Documentaries and their subjects will still there. Independent productions have the chance of securing interim agreements from SAG-AFTRA.

But the biggest film festivals depend on having red carpets flush with stars. And it’s not only about the photo opportunities. Films come to a festival like Toronto looking to make as big a splash as possible, and announce themselves to moviegoers and Oscar voters.

A movie like “The Pain Hustlers” could have expected to cause quite a stir. Directed by “Harry Potter” filmmaker David Yates, it boasts a starry cast led by Emily Blunt and Chris Evans as pharmaceutical drug reps in the early days