Steve Carell…John E. DuPont in Foxcatcher

In the last 10 days, hundreds of thousands of film fans and experts, including 45 HFPA members, descended on Toronto with great expectations and hopes to discover next year’s potential Best Picture Golden Globe and Oscar winner. Armed with their precious tickets, they stood patiently for hours in long lines in the sweltering heat, hoping to witness film history again.

But while there hasn’t been an outstanding best picture contender, there have been so many award-worthy male performances that rendered best picture debate almost irrelevant. Instead, fans and experts were embroiled in a discussion about next year’s Golden Globe and Academy winner in the best lead actor category.

Many performances are drawn from real life and bring to life real people, both dead and alive: Benedict Cumberbatch as code breaker Alan Turing; Timothy Spall as the painter J.M.W. Turner; Eddie Redmayne as the crippled scientific genius Stephen Hawking and Sterve Carell as the deranged billionaire John E DuPont.

The question on people’s lips was: where are the ladies?

No doubt TIFF is feeling the heat from other competing festivals, which are also trying to be relevant in the awards race. TIFF’s recent attempt to dissuade filmmakers from opening their films in Venice and Telluride film festivals, both held a week earlier, by disallowing their film from being screened in the first 4 coveted days, before the the press and the industry leave the city, has backfired. Many important films, that had opened in other festivals, were jammed in a very tight schedule and others such as Birdman, have skipped Toronto altogether and headed directly to The New York Film Festival.

That said, TIFF is not only about predicting awards, it’s about film commerce too, where movies are sold and projects are financed. Setting a record, Chris Rock’s “Top Five” sold to Paramount for $12.5 million. This kind of figure is an anomaly, for the rest of the deals averaged around $3 million. Among them was John Travolta’s heist movie “The Forger,” and Michael Douglas’s “The Reach” for $2 million each. Clearly big star names don’t yield big money in the age of Hollywood blockbusters.

As TIFF wraps up its activities without providing clear runaways, eyes will be shifting to New York, where the festival will open this month with David Fincher’s highly anticipated “Gone Girl”, and will also premiere Paul Thomas Anderson “Inherent Vice.”

Sam Asi