Venice awards its second Career Golden Lion, Toronto opens with a film market
The award to Ellen Burstyn was presented on September 7, with a masterclass scheduled today at 4pm. From September 10, the Canadian festival debuts TIFF: The Market.
The 83rd Venice International Film Festival takes place at the Lido di Venezia from September 2 to 12, 2026, under the direction of Alberto Barbera. This year there are two Career Golden Lions: the first was presented to George Clooney at the opening ceremony on September 2, with a laudatio by Laura Dern; the second went to American actress Ellen Burstyn, presented on Monday, September 7. This is reported in a statement by the Biennale di Venezia, picked up in coverage by Uomini & Donne della Comunicazione.
On Venice, Clooney said:
“The Festival is without doubt my favorite festival” — George Clooney, actor, director and producer
The follow-up to Burstyn’s award is scheduled for today: the actress’s masterclass is planned for Tuesday, September 8 at 4pm at the Match Point Arena at the Lido. The format — a public conversation with the honoree the day after the presentation — has by now become a fixed part of the career achievement award, turning a prize into programming content.
Toronto, the novelty is not a film
On September 10, as Venice enters its final days, the 51st edition of the Toronto International Film Festival opens, running through September 20. The opening film is Being Heumann by Sian Heder, and the closing film is Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend by Yan Lanouette Turgeon, according to the official program as reconstructed by Screen International and the entry on the English-language edition of Wikipedia.
The structural novelty of this edition, however, is not a title: it is the formal launch of a film market, TIFF: The Market, hosted at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Toronto has historically been an audience festival and a launchpad toward awards season; the addition of a market puts it on a different footing, that of festivals which sell and buy rights in addition to screening films.
The selection numbers give a sense of the filter: for the Special Presentations section, 69 films were chosen out of roughly 9,000 submissions from 100 countries, as also reported by RUSSH. And the numbers for the overall scale come from the previous edition: in 2025 the festival screened 216 feature films, 66 short films and ten series from 79 countries, with over 760,000 attendees.
| Toronto, the numbers | |
|---|---|
| 2026 dates | September 10-20 |
| Special Presentations | 69 films out of roughly 9,000 submissions |
| Countries of origin of submissions | 100 |
| 2025 attendance | over 760,000 |
Two models compared
Venice and Toronto overlap on the calendar for three days and operate on different logics: the Festival awards prizes through a jury and builds its profile around the competition and career achievement awards; Toronto focuses on volume, audience and — starting this year — an in-house commercial platform.
What we don’t know
We do not know the complete list of titles in competition at Venice nor the composition of the jury from today’s sources, and we do not have the total number of films selected at Toronto beyond the Special Presentations. We do not know how many industry professionals are accredited for TIFF: The Market, a figure that would measure the operation’s success.
The Venice Film Festival closes on September 12; the Canadian festival ends on the 20th.
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