10 takeaways from the Toronto International Film Festival

The festival must now account for changes in distribution models, studio whims of bringing big-budget movies north of the border and the availability of talent, who are now much more eager to control their social media instead of doing interviews.

There are so many movies from all over the world, so spread out over the downtown area and so many industry people, film-festival bookers and publicists that everyone's festival is pretty much his or her own.

So here are 10 of my personal takeaways from my time at TIFF 2016:

1. The most moving stories from the fest came from the Disney film Queen of Katwe, the story of a young, illiterate, corn-selling girl from the slums of Uganda, who became a chess champion. She now wants to become a lawyer to give voice to the poor people of her village.

Imagine that one of the first times you've EVER seen a movie on a screen, it's with 2,000 people on the other side of the world and the movie is about you. Try to wrap your head around that.

The real Robert Katende, the chess teacher who is one of the main characters in the film, told a story about how director Mira Nair paid for him to take some of his young chess players to see Selma, Katende sat there stunned watching David Oyelowo, who plays Katende, play Martin Luther King Jr.

"That man is coming to our slums to play me," he said.

Katende also mentioned that one of the first names he heard as a possibility for his role was ... Will Smith.

2. In the super-small-world department, the parents of Katwe star Lupita Nyong'o, who grew up in Kenya, were friends with director Mira Nair, who's lived the last quarter-century in Uganda. Nyong'o was an intern on Nair's 2006 film, The Namesake.

3. Busy actor Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals, Loving) became my first interview subject ever to greet me at the hotel elevator. He was wearing dark socks, shorts and a T-shirt and was just as quirky and interesting as you would hope.

4. Also on the subject of the daring and different, Nocturnal Animals director Tom Ford, who flew back-and-forth to Venice to claim his Best Director prize, became the first multi-hyphenate in TIFF history to write, direct and produce a movie and ALSO dress his cast for the premiere. They looked sharp.

5. Three of the most-talked-about films in my sphere have been La La Land, Moonlight and Elle. The first two have received almost universal praise and the third has received both mad love and revulsion. It's from director Paul Verhoeven and it's a talker.

6. When I sat down to chat with Lucas Hedges and Kyle Chandler from the moving Kenneth Lonergan drama, Manchester By the Sea, there were two cans of Guinness on the table and two women lying on one of the queen-size beds. Nothing untoward, just typical Toronto publicist exhaustion.

7. Aussie actor Joel Edgerton (Loving) perfectly described the life of an actor with a movie at a film festival: "You talk about yourself all day and celebrate yourself at night."

8. The Nate Parker controversy did not disappear in Toronto. His film, The Birth of a Nation, was received incredibly well at a public screening. His answer/non-answer to a softball version of the question about rape allegations when he was a student at Penn State made for an incredibly awkward press conference.

9. Also awkward was an industry conference about casting. Asked whether their social media presence had anything to do with their ability to be cast in roles, the actresses said absolutely not and the casting directors said absolutely yes. Awkward silence and much glaring ensued.

10. Fox unveiled about 15 minutes of footage from its upcoming release, Hidden Figures, about three super-smart black women (played by Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae) instrumental in the NASA space program in the 1960s but still forced to use "coloreds only" bathrooms. At a Q&A after the footage, Henson was so moved seeing the film come together for the first time, she repeatedly broke down in tears.