Western media students learn what it takes to be a film critic at TIFF | CBC News

Western University students are getting a taste of what it takes to be a movie critic at one of the world’s largest film festivals in Toronto this week.

Twenty students in Western’s PhD Media Studies program are being bussed to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to watch and critique two films a day from Wednesday to Saturday.

Amid the glitz and glamour of star-studded red carpet premieres are largely unknown, independent films from across the globe, showcasing diverse stories for students to focus on, said Shawn Cheatham, a graduate student coordinating the Film Festival Critics Lab.

“Watching with an enthusiastic crowd that really is engaged and excited is such a different experience for them and they’ll have access to things they normally would never get a chance to see,” said Cheatham.

They’re also getting a behind-the-scenes look at how films land a spot at the festival and get picked up by a distributor thanks to Nataleah Hunter-Young, a faculty member with the Media Studies program and one of the festival’s international programmers.

“The film festival world is this kind of hermetically sealed universe to filmmakers. A lot of us want to know how to get our films into big venues like TIFF and it’s been really great to have that process broken down,” Cheatham said.

The ongoing strike by actors and writers in Hollywood is also going to be touched on to highlight the connections between the makers, the financiers and the labourers who work on set and what the ripple effects could mean for the student’s futures in the industry, he said.

A once in a lifetime opportunity

It’s a dream come true for Santasil Mallik, an international student from India and a second-year PhD candidate in the program. It gives him the opportunity to share his love of films with people outside of academia by allowing him to write in a more accessible way.

“Having access to such a big festival which is connected on a global scale, attending screenings and getting to know the [film] industry up close is huge for me,” said Mallik.

Billie Anderson, a fourth-year student in the program, is looking forward to seeing films that might never be commercially shown again in Canada and is excited to see how her classmates’ diverse backgrounds and experiences will impact their critiques.

“We’re all going to the same movies so I think it would be really cool to see all of the reviews at the end of this.”

No Canadian content on the program

Most of the films the students are set to watch are from foreign filmmakers that are largely unknown in Canada, except among film buffs and festival-goers, Cheatham said.

While there are plenty of Canadian films being showcased, Western didn’t choose any because they didn’t line up with their scheduling.

“It’s just the fact that TIFF has so many films from international filmmakers that we get the treat of seeing things like that,” he said.

The films that students are critiquing include:

TIFF continues until September 17.