FILM SUMMIT PRO EVENTS - MORE TO COME!
IFFSA Film Summit 2026 will be a three-day gathering of filmmakers and industry leaders across the art and business of cinema—part of Canada’s largest 360° South Asian screen ecosystem, building capacity, connections and opportunities for South Asian storytelling. The Summit takes place alongside the 11-day IFFSA Film Festival. Join for the complete three-day Summit, a full day, or an individual event.
Explore the Full Lineup Below
BUILDING THE SOUTH ASIAN CANADIAN SCREEN ECONOMY: By Invitation Industry Think Tank
Date: Saturday, Oct 10 | 11:00 AM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
BUILDING THE SOUTH ASIAN CANADIAN SCREEN ECONOMY
An Invitation Only Industry Think Tank
The first feature is one of the defining leaps in a filmmaker’s journey—where creative ambition meets the greater scale, stakes and realities of feature filmmaking.
How do you take a first feature from script to screen—and make the leap in scale, resources and responsibility it demands? Cannes and TIFF alumni filmmakers break down their own debut journeys, sharing how they developed a producible script, built the right producer and creative team, approached financing and budgeting, made critical choices under limited resources, navigated production and post, and positioned the finished film for festivals, markets and audiences.
A practical, experience-led masterclass offering a roadmap for developing, financing, making and launching your first feature.
MAKING THE LEAP: A Masterclass in Building Your Debut Feature Film
Date: Saturday, Oct 10 | 11:30 AM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
MAKING THE LEAP
A Masterclass in Building Your Debut Feature Film
The first feature is one of the defining leaps in a filmmaker’s journey—where creative ambition meets the greater scale, stakes and realities of feature filmmaking.
How do you take a first feature from script to screen—and make the leap in scale, resources and responsibility it demands? Cannes and TIFF alumni filmmakers break down their own debut journeys, sharing how they developed a producible script, built the right producer and creative team, approached financing and budgeting, made critical choices under limited resources, navigated production and post, and positioned the finished film for festivals, markets and audiences.
A practical, experience-led masterclass offering a roadmap for developing, financing, making and launching your first feature.
DAY 1 DELEGATES LUNCH: Where Food Fuels Conversation and Connection
Date: Saturday, Oct 10 | 1:00 PM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
DAY 1 DELEGATES LUNCH
Where Food Fuels Conversation and Connection
![Day 1 | Event 4 BECOMING :
From a Creative Vision to a Life in Cinema [With Canadian Film Centre]
Date: Saturday, Oct 10 | 2:00 PM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
BECOMING
From a Creative Vision to a Life in Cinema [With Canadian Film Centre]
A career in cinema is rarely defined by a single break. How does creative promise become a distinctive voice—and that voice become a body of work? Drawing on CFC’s decades of nurturing Canadian directors, writers, producers and editors, BECOMING explores the evolution of a filmmaker: sharpening your craft, finding the collaborators who elevate the work, learning through making, building a creative community, and developing the resilience and curiosity to keep evolving.
A conversation about the long journey from having something to say to building a life in cinema.](https://iffsatoronto.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/8-1.jpg.webp)
BECOMING : From a Creative Vision to a Life in Cinema [With Canadian Film Centre]
Date: Saturday, Oct 10 | 2:00 PM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
BECOMING
From a Creative Vision to a Life in Cinema [With Canadian Film Centre]
A career in cinema is rarely defined by a single break. How does creative promise become a distinctive voice—and that voice become a body of work? Drawing on CFC’s decades of nurturing Canadian directors, writers, producers and editors, BECOMING explores the evolution of a filmmaker: sharpening your craft, finding the collaborators who elevate the work, learning through making, building a creative community, and developing the resilience and curiosity to keep evolving.
A conversation about the long journey from having something to say to building a life in cinema.
NORTH / SOUTH : Building a Career Between Canada and Hollywood
Date: Saturday, Oct 10 | 4:15 PM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
NORTH / SOUTH
Building a Career Between Canada and Hollywood
Careers no longer belong to one city. For Canadian filmmakers and performers, Los Angeles can be a destination, a detour, a second home—or simply another room in which the work happens. NORTH / SOUTH brings together actors, writers, directors and producers whose careers move between Canada and Hollywood to explore what it means to build across two industries: finding representation, cultivating relationships, navigating opportunity, knowing when to leave and when to return, and turning the border from a barrier into a bridge.
BECOMING A STAR, REMAINING AN ACTOR : A Masterclass with Jimmy Shergill
Date: Saturday, Oct 10 | 5:30 PM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
BECOMING A STAR, REMAINING AN ACTOR
A Masterclass with Jimmy Shergill on Crafting Performances and Building a Body of Work That Keeps Revealing Something New
Stardom can define a career. The rare ones continue to expand its possibilities. From the raw political and emotional terrain of Maachis to the romance of Mohabbatein, the intensity of Haasil and Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster, the moral tension of A Wednesday! and the bruised humour of Tanu Weds Manu, Jimmy Shergill has built a body of work remarkable for its range—moving between star and character, restraint and volatility, romance and rage, mainstream cinema and fiercely individual storytelling, without allowing any one image to contain him.
In this intimate masterclass, Shergill goes inside the actor’s work behind that journey: how he reads and enters a role, finds the emotional register of a character, uses restraint and presence on screen, works against expectation, and makes choices that allow familiar faces to feel new. He also reflects on the larger choices between roles—what to accept, when to take a risk, how to resist being confined by a successful screen image, and how individual performances gradually become a body of work.
DRESSING THE STORY: A Workshop on the Art of Costume Design
Date: Sunday, Oct 11 | 11:30 AM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
DRESSING THE STORY
The Art of Costume Design
Before a character speaks, what they wear has already begun telling us who they are. DRESSING THE STORY goes inside the creative process of costume design—from reading a script and building a visual language to researching worlds, shaping character through silhouette, colour and texture, and working with directors, actors and production designers to bring that vision to the screen.
Through real films and creative choices, this masterclass explores how costume can reveal class, culture, desire, contradiction and transformation—and become an essential part of the storytelling itself.
DAY 2 DELEGATES LUNCH: A Masterclass in Building Your Debut Feature Film
Date: Sunday, Oct 11 | 1:00 PM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
MAKING THE LEAP
A Masterclass in Building Your Debut Feature Film
The first feature is one of the defining leaps in a filmmaker’s journey—where creative ambition meets the greater scale, stakes and realities of feature filmmaking.
How do you take a first feature from script to screen—and make the leap in scale, resources and responsibility it demands? Cannes and TIFF alumni filmmakers break down their own debut journeys, sharing how they developed a producible script, built the right producer and creative team, approached financing and budgeting, made critical choices under limited resources, navigated production and post, and positioned the finished film for festivals, markets and audiences.
A practical, experience-led masterclass offering a roadmap for developing, financing, making and launching your first feature.
THE FILM INSIDE THE BOOK: A Masterclass in Writing Screen Adaptations
Date: Sunday, Oct 11 | 2:00 PM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
THE FILM INSIDE THE BOOK
A Masterclass in Writing Screen Adaptations
A great adaptation is not simply a book transferred to the screen—it is a work of interpretation. How do you find the film within the source material while preserving what made the original compelling?
This masterclass explores the creative choices at the heart of adaptation: identifying the dramatic spine, deciding what to keep, cut or reinvent, translating interior worlds into action and image, reshaping characters and structure, and balancing fidelity to the source with the demands of cinematic storytelling.
A practical exploration of how writers transform the language of literature into the language of film.
THE DIRECTOR’S LANGUAGE : A Masterclass on Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema
Date: Sunday, Oct 11 | 4:15 PM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
THE DIRECTOR’S LANGUAGE
Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema
Are filmmakers building their audience—or is the audience building the filmmakers?
Contemporary cinema is being shaped by an audience that increasingly expects immediacy: quicker pace, sharper humour, heightened emotion, visceral violence, striking images and stories that capture attention fast. But when audience appetite begins influencing the very language of filmmaking, where does that leave the director?
THE DIRECTOR’S LANGUAGE explores how these shifts are changing the craft of direction—from pacing, performance and visual grammar to genre, humour, action, sound and the construction of the scene. Through contemporary films and practical exercises, the workshop examines how directors can engage the audience of today without allowing expectation, algorithms and trends to dictate the cinema they make.
A masterclass about directing for the audience of now—without losing the filmmaker within.
FROM CANNES TO BERLINALE: The Architecture of an International Film Career
Date: Sunday, Oct 11 | 5:15 PM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
FROM CANNES TO BERLINALE
The Architecture of an International Film Career – A Masterclass with Shahrbanoo Sadat
From Wolf and Sheep and The Orphanage at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight to No Good Men opening the 2026 Berlinale, Shahrbanoo Sadat has built a remarkable international career while remaining fiercely rooted in her own cinematic voice.
In this masterclass, Sadat traces the creative and strategic choices behind that journey—developing a distinctive body of work, navigating international development and financing, building enduring producing relationships, working across co-productions, and understanding how festivals, markets and industry relationships can carry a filmmaker and their work across borders.
An inside look at how an uncompromising artistic voice can grow into a sustained career in world cinema.
THE PITCH BEFORE THE PITCH: What It Takes to Get a Project Greenlit
Date: Monday, Oct 12 | 11:30 PM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
THE PITCH BEFORE THE PITCH
What It Takes to Get a Project Greenlit
A project begins making its case long before anyone walks into the decision room. What makes producers, financiers, broadcasters and platforms see an idea as more than compelling—and believe it is ready to move?
sharpening the concept and understanding its audience to packaging talent, attaching the right partners, building a financing strategy and creating materials that signal readiness. Through the perspectives of those who develop, finance and greenlight projects, the session reveals what decision-makers are really looking for—and what turns interest into a yes.
DAY 3 DELEGATES LUNCH: A Masterclass in Building Your Debut Feature Film
Date: Monday, Oct 12 | 1:00 PM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
MAKING THE LEAP
A Masterclass in Building Your Debut Feature Film
The first feature is one of the defining leaps in a filmmaker’s journey—where creative ambition meets the greater scale, stakes and realities of feature filmmaking.
How do you take a first feature from script to screen—and make the leap in scale, resources and responsibility it demands? Cannes and TIFF alumni filmmakers break down their own debut journeys, sharing how they developed a producible script, built the right producer and creative team, approached financing and budgeting, made critical choices under limited resources, navigated production and post, and positioned the finished film for festivals, markets and audiences.
A practical, experience-led masterclass offering a roadmap for developing, financing, making and launching your first feature.
IFFSA TALENT FUND: Live Project Pitching | Bright Lights 2026/27
Date: Monday, Oct 12 | 2:00 PM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
IFFSA TALENT FUND
Live Project Pitching | Bright Lights 2026/27
Ten projects. One room. And the chance to turn an idea into a film.
The finalists of the IFFSA Talent Fund’s Bright Lights 2026/27 take their projects before a live industry jury, making the case for their story, creative vision and readiness to bring it to the screen.
For filmmakers in the audience, it is a rare opportunity to experience the pitch process from inside the room—to see how projects are presented, what captures a jury’s attention, the questions that follow, and what ultimately makes a pitch stand out.
The session culminates in the selection of the winning projects, which will receive IFFSA Talent Fund production financing and continued mentorship to help bring their films to the screen.
MONEY HAS A MAP: A Masterclass on Navigating the Canadian Funding Ecosystem
Date: Monday, Oct 12 | 5:30 PM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
MONEY HAS A MAP
Navigating the Canadian Funding Ecosystem
Canada has extraordinary mechanisms for getting screen work made. It also has an extraordinary number of doors. MONEY HAS A MAP demystifies how those doors connect—from development funding, producers and broadcasters to Telefilm, CMF, provincial agencies, tax credits and other financing sources—and, crucially, what comes before what.
Through a real-world case study, the session then puts the map into practice, breaking down the financing of an actual Canadian production to reveal how its budget was assembled: what came first, what unlocked the next piece, where the gaps emerged, and how the financing ultimately came together.
A practical guide to understanding not just where the money is—but how a film is actually financed in Canada.
FROM FILMMAKER TO FILM BUSINESS: From One Film to a Sustainable Slate
Date: Monday, Oct 12 | 6:30 PM
Venue: Courtyard By Marriott, 90 Biscayne Cres Brampton
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
FROM FILMMAKER TO FILM BUSINESS
From One Film to a Sustainable Slate
What changes when you stop thinking about the next film and start thinking about the next five? From Filmmaker To Film Business explores the shift from project-by-project filmmaking to building a sustainable screen business—developing a pipeline, assembling a balanced slate, managing IP and rights, creating financing strategies, building long-term producing and industry relationships, and putting in place the infrastructure that allows one project to fuel the next.
Because longevity in film is not only about making great work—it is about building the engine that keeps you making it.
*Festival management reserves the right to modify schedule and replace content under unforeseen circumstances. All film screenings/events are for 18+ audience.