Five days at the Lightbox, and a nineteenth year. The Toronto Palestine Film Festival lands at TIFF Bell Lightbox from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4, bringing Palestinian features, shorts and visiting filmmakers back to 350 King St. W, according to an announcement from TIFF.
It’s a slot the festival knows by heart. TPFF launched in 2008 to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the Nakba — the displacement of Palestinians that followed the establishment of Israel in 1948 — and has grown into the third longest-running showcase of Palestinian cinema in North America, staffed almost entirely by volunteers. Its home base has barely moved: the Lightbox, TIFF’s year-round headquarters, which the festival takes over each fall shortly after the Toronto International Film Festival rolls up its red carpets.
The most recent edition, the 18th, assembled 23 features and 91 shorts — the biggest lineup organizers had ever put together, they said at the time — and paired in-person screenings with a limited online window for audiences outside the city. Inside the building, the mood was its own thing: keffiyehs in the foyer, a volunteer table stacked with passes, and, as one visiting critic noted, “no indication whatsoever that another festival is taking place inside.”
What has grown fastest is the work behind the screen. TPFF’s residency program, run with the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, premiered three locally made shorts at the Lightbox in 2025 — the first time the residency carried a fixed theme, anti-Palestinian racism, which ACLA had named and defined in a 2022 framework report. Filmmakers got $5,000, equipment access and months of mentorship. “The goal was never just to make art,” programmer Amanda Boulos said. “It was to make something that could not be ignored.”
Longevity here has meant consistency of geography as much as calendar. The fourth edition, in 2011, also opened Sept. 30, running to Oct. 7 with 24 films and 11 Canadian premieres. The 2013 edition spread across five venues — Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, Beit Zatoun, the AGO’s Jackman Hall, OCAD U and the Lightbox — before King Street became the constant.
The five-day run closes Oct. 4 with the festival’s vigil at 6:45 p.m. in the Lightbox gallery, alongside two days of workshops, per the festival’s program page. Ticket and lineup details follow closer to the fall.
