Opinion | When a 91-year-old renter in Toronto is evicted with nowhere else to go, our governments have failed completely

It is something of a golden moment for those in their golden years. At least, when it comes to stories on the big and small screen. In theatres, you can watch the 95-year-old June Squibb lead Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, Eleanor the Great. At home, there’s Steve Martin (age 80) and Martin Short (75) solving one slaying after another with Only Murders in the Building. And on Netflix, one of the most popular titles is The Thursday Murder Club, in which Helen Mirren (80), Pierce Brosnan (72), and Ben Kingsley (81) crack cases in between early-bird dinners at their retirement community.
All of which makes it as good a time as any to launch the sixth edition of Toronto’s Ageless International Film Festival, which executive director and co-founder Judy Gladstone describes as an event designed to illuminate stories about senior citizens, but not exclusively cater toward them. In other words, all audiences are welcome. It’s right there in the title, after all: “Ageless.” “Our goal is to implement change in terms of how people look at older generations,” Gladstone said. “It’s important to have young people coming.
They’re the ones who can make the change.”This year’s festival, a pay-what-you-can affair that runs over the course of October in such venues as Innis Town Hall, Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema and the Alliance Française headquarters on Spadina, kicked off Friday with a screening of M. Night Shyamalan’s 2021 psychological thriller Old, a title both on point and underscoring Gladstone’s interest in telling unexpected stories about what life has in store for all of us. Many screenings will be accompanied by introductions or postmovie discussions, including Shyamalan’s film, which will be dissected by University of Toronto cinema studies scholar Soren Stancliff.
The festival’s biggest event, though, might be the Sunday screening of the 1985 National Film Board of Canada documentary Final Offer, director Sturla Gunnarsson’s landmark look at the 1984 contract negotiations between the United Auto Workers and General Motors, heated discussions that touched on issues of seniority and age in the workplace.
The 40th-anniversary screening, presented in partnership with Unifor and Hot Docs, will include a discussion between union representatives Lana Payne and John D’Agnolo, with an introduction by former Toronto International Film Festival chief executive Piers Handling.
Ageless, which was launched in 2020 and initially online only, will also feature the season’s most talked-about awards contenders, including the Oct. 27 screening of Joachim Trier’s Cannes-certified drama Sentimental Value, starring Stellan Skarsgard as an elderly filmmaker hoping to reunite with his actress daughter played by Renate Reinsve, and the Oct. 29 screening of The Blue Trail, a Brazilian drama that premiered at TIFF last month that follows a 77-year-old retiree who defies a government order for forced relocation. And, of course, the current poster girl for senior-citizen cinema, Squibb, is on the bill with the Saturday screening of Johansson’s Eleanor the Great, an event that will be followed by a discussion with Catherine Gourdier, the Canadian author of Breathe Cry Breathe: From Sorrow to Strength in the Aftermath of Sudden, Tragic Loss.

For more information and to reserve seats, visit agelessfilmfestival.org.