Marianne Jean-Baptiste on Being a TIFF Platform Jury Member: “I’ll Be Open”

“But he’s so good!”

That was Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s reaction to the news that Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair’s chief film critic, had been let go from the publication last month. The news was met with shock and fear about the tenuous state of film criticism, upended by several cultural shifts at once: the rise of film influencers, film studios’ open courting of those influencers with red carpet and press screening access, and the overall media ecosystem’s degradation because of private equity acquisitions and the collapse of online traffic.

“It certainly makes a difference,” Jean-Baptiste said about the role of film critics in the film industry. “Because they’re the voices of the underdog in a lot of cases.”

Jean-Baptiste takes that role seriously as she serves as part of the three-member jury of the 50th Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) Platform program. The program, according to the festival, “champions bold directorial vision and distinctive storytelling,” doing so by presenting ten films from filmmakers who represent the future of cinema and are “poised to break out on the world stage.” The Platform program is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, alongside TIFF’s milestone half-centennial celebration. In its first decade, the program has spotlighted several critically acclaimed films, including Darius Marder’s Oscar-winning Sound of Metal and Barry Jenkins’ Best Picture winner Moonlight. 

The jury members responsible for finding the next breakthrough title are Spanish filmmaker Carlos Marqués-Marcet, whose film, They Will Be Dust, won the Platform prize last year; Québécois filmmaker Chloé Robichaud, who wowed Sundance in January with Two Women; and Jean-Baptiste, who attended TIFF last year with Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths. 

Jean-Baptiste’s primary motivation for participating in the Platform jury was the rare opportunity to see films that she wouldn’t have the time or opportunity to see. “I never have the time to see anything other than the film I’ve been in,” she explained. “I just jumped at the chance of being able to go and sit in a movie theater with other human beings and experience film.” 

Jean-Baptiste continued, “There are so many great films that you probably never get a chance to see again, because some don’t have distribution. It’s a golden opportunity to see some of the little gems that you have to search for if you want to see them outside of a festival.”

TIFF is regarded as the world’s largest public film festival, and for Jean-Baptiste, its openness and community-minded spirit sets it apart from others on the calendar. “When I went out [at the festival], it just feels so real and so very human, and the public feels so much more part of the festival than I’ve experienced at other places,” she said. “You forget, because you read so much about people not going to the cinema anymore, and then you got to TIFF and these screenings are packed with regular people. It’s just folks going to celebrate and enjoy film. I think that’s what, for me, is what’s really wonderful about the TIFF experience.”

Jean-Baptiste, Marqués-Marcet, and Robichaud will play a key part in the TIFF experience as the Platform Jury. The creatives have a lunch planned at the start of the festival, where, besides meeting for the first time, they will align on what it is they’re looking for in a Jury prize winner. 

I asked her about the jury’s collective intentions, but Jean Baptiste didn’t find consensus particularly necessary. “I don’t even know that we need to be on the same page,” she said. “That’s what a jury is for, isn’t it? A jury of your peers that are all different, that have different tastes, that may be looking for different things. Then, you come together to try and make some middle ground to come to a decision.”

The films that the Platform jury will be seeking common ground on are: Farnoosh Samadi’s queer romance Between Dreams and Hope; Orian Barki and Meriem Bennani’s 3D-animated Bouchra; György Pálfi’s Hen; Kasia Adamik’s Winter of the Crow starring Lesley Manville; Yoon Ga-eun’s The World of Love; Milagros Mumenthaler’s The Currents; Pauline Loquès’ Nino; Bretten Hannam’s spiritual drama Sk+te’kmujue’katik (At the Place of Ghosts); Valentyn Vasyanovych’s To The Victory!; and Steve, Tim Mielant’s third collaboration with Oscar winner Cillian Murphy.

TIFF50: Platform Lineup Revealed, Jury Announced Featuring Marianne Jean-Baptiste

With a slate of films that features everything from a sprightly chicken as a protagonist to an imagining of Ukraine’s post-war future, what is Jean-Baptiste specifically looking for?

“Something original,” Jean-Baptiste said. “And when I say original, I don’t actually mean something that we’ve never seen before, but something that feels new, something that feels like the director, the writer, and the team are trying to take our art form forward in some way.”

Jean-Baptiste’s cited examples range across the entertainment spectrum. The first was Souleymane’s Story, the French film about a Guinean immigrant who works for a food delivery service while preparing his asylum application. She was also taken with the cultural sensation Sinners, specifically Sammie’s performance at the juke joint and Coogler building in a generations-spanning survey of Black music. Then, there is Adolescence, the Emmy-nominated Netflix series about a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering his classmate, and its highly touted one-shot structure.

What links the three projects is bold, convention-breaking directorial choices that serve the story, whether or not the stories themselves are novel. She cautions, however, that celebrating ambition does require clarity about what it means from a practical standpoint.

“Ambition could be holding a scene with two people and letting it play out without cutting in, doing all the normal coverage,” Jean Baptiste explains. “A bold move could be casting somebody who is the complete opposite of what we imagine that character looking like. Boldness and ambition can be viewed on very different levels.”

She continues, folding in how she approaches a story, “My thing is experience. What do I feel about this? What changes are happening in me while I’m watching this? How does it resonate?” From a technical standpoint, Jean-Baptiste considers all the elements of a film — the script, acting, and cinematography among them — collectively, and how they serve the world in which a story inhabits. “With the acting, if that’s not on point, you’re going to be pulled out of the story. If the production design is louder than the story, you’re going to be pulled out of it. It goes for all the elements. If they don’t seem organic or authentic to the story they’re telling, they’re just a distraction.”

When it comes to judging the Platform selections themselves, Jean-Baptiste intends to put the story above all else, including her own festival experiences. “I will go in open and hope to be taken on a journey with whatever story is on display. I don’t know that I’ll be influenced by [things like] if it’s got distribution. I’ll just let the story and the filmmaking speak for itself.”

The 50th Toronto International Film Festival runs September 4-14.