Built on land donated by a Toronto-born Hollywood director
TIFF Bell Lightbox
Toronto International Film Festival's permanent home opened in 2010 on land donated by director Ivan Reitman — and construction crews digging the foundation found artifacts from a hospital that stood on the site nearly two centuries earlier.
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Our festivals guide covers TIFF itself. This page is about the building that gave Canada's largest film festival a permanent year-round home for the first time in its history.
A director's donation
TIFF Bell Lightbox opened on September 12, 2010, built on land donated by Ivan Reitman and his family — the Toronto-born director of Ghostbusters and Stripes, part of the same SCTV-adjacent generation of Toronto comedy talent that shaped so much of North American film comedy. The project was a joint venture between the TIFF Group and the King and John Festival Corporation, combining the Reitman family with real estate developer Daniels Corporation.
A discovery underground
Excavation for the building's foundation turned up an unexpected find: artifacts belonging to the York General Hospital, which had stood on the same site as far back as 1829 — a physical reminder that downtown Toronto's current buildings are rarely the first thing to occupy their ground.
What it holds
Designed by KPMB Architects, the building holds five cinemas seating more than 1,300 people combined, two restaurants, gallery and exhibition space, a rooftop terrace and dedicated learning studios — running year-round programming well beyond the annual festival itself. It carried the "TIFF Bell Lightbox" name under sponsorship from Bell Canada until that corporate naming deal ended in 2023.
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