Sunday night, as the festival’s halfway mark draws near, the scene hit its zenith, with Night 4 kicking off downtown on Ossington Avenue at French restaurant La Banane, where Variety and Chanel were hosting their inaugural female filmmakers dinner in honour of Keira Knightley’s extraordinary achievement in film.
The dinner comes ahead of Tuesday’s Canadian premiere of director Wash Westmoreland’s most recent film, Colette, a historical drama about the French novelist and gay icon, in which Knightley stars, alongside Dominic West. Actors Sarah Gadon, Bel Powley, Julia Goldani Telles, Elizabeth Olsen, Gael Garcia Bernal and Alexander Skarsgard, singer Charlotte Cardin, directors Karyn Kusama and Patricia Rozema and photographer Caitlin Cronenberg, were among them toasting Ms. Knightly.
Toronto’s Masonic Temple, a hall that in the 1930s functioned as a ballroom and later housed rock acts (including the city's first Led Zeppelin concert in the winter of 1969), was the space for the party that followed the premiere of what is possibly the festival’s most talked about film: the 2018 reinvention of A Star Is Born, the Hollywood classic so good that it's been made three previous times, in 1937, 1954 and, of course, the 1976 edition, which starred Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.
Read more: The Globe’s guide to TIFF 2018 movies
The reboot marks Bradly Cooper’s directorial debut, and the feature film debut for Lady Gaga, both of whom were on hand at the Audi Canada and Links of London co-hosted bash. Comedian Dave Chappelle, one of the film’s co-stars, was there, too, to introduce DJ Kardinal Offishall, who had actors including Salma Hayek, Jason Isaacs, Michael Kenneth Williams and Darren Criss, who were all out to support the film, moving on the dance floor.
Back downtown, at the Bisha Hotel, Don Julio was hosting a happening in celebration of the world premiere of American Woman, director Jake Scott’s latest, which has Sienna Miller, Christina Hendricks and Aaron Paul all in leading roles.
Over at RBC House, a cocktail party was held to celebrate the world premiere of writer/director Alex Ross Perry’s latest Her Smell, starring Elisabeth Moss, as Becky Something, a foul-mouthed musician. The film’s mostly female cast, which includes Amber Heard, actor/models Agyness Deyn and Cara Delevingne, Ashley Benson, Dylan Gelula and Gayle Rankin, were all in attendance.
Earlier, in the same space, actors Alec Baldwin, Jeffrey Wright, Christian Slater and Taylor Schilling were all out ahead of the premiere of their film The Public, director Emilio Estevez’s latest. Nearby at House of Aurora, the premiere party for Tell It To The Bees, which stars Academy Award-winner Anna Paquin and Holliday Grainger, was under way, and the film’s director Annabel Jankel was also out.
Looking ahead to this coming week, a batch of bashes will see the festival out, and Soho House will be the spot for a handful of the big ones hosted by Grey Goose Vodka, including Carey Mulligan’s latest Wildlife, a cast dinner for Destroyer, starring Nicole Kidman and Tatiana Maslany, and a happening hosted for The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, director Xavier Dolan’s much anticipated film with Kit Harington and Susan Sarandon in the leading roles.
Ms. Kidman will be out again later in the week to celebrate Boy Erased, at a party being given in the Unzipped Pavilion, a temporary space designed by Bjarke Ingels courtesy of development giant Westbank Corp.