Recall if you will the parable of the blind men and the elephant: Six blind men approach an elephant and are asked to describe it. One feels the pachyderm’s tail and determines that an elephant is like a rope; one feels its trunk and says the beast is like a tree branch, etc.

Buffalo movie-lovers are a truly blessed bunch: They have one of the world’s best film festivals sitting right in their backyard. We may think of a film festival simply as an opportunity to pack in a lot of movies over a few days, but the Toronto International Film Festival is more than that. It’s a special and intense experience, a fantasy-like pocket of space and time devoted to complete and exhilarating immersion in cinema, morning to night.