TIFF Honorees Plead for Empathy Amid Global Turmoil

On September 8th, 2025, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) held its annual Tribute Awards gala, honoring industry leaders for their outstanding contributions. This year's event also marked TIFF's 50th edition.

During the ceremony, several of the honorees, including Idris Elba, Guillermo del Toro, and Nina Hoss, used their acceptance speeches to urge the audience to embrace empathy and compassion in the face of the world's current challenges. Though they did not explicitly name specific conflicts, the speakers made veiled references to issues like rising authoritarianism, the wars in Sudan and Gaza, and the threat of famine.

Hoss, who received a Performer Award, emphasized the power of cinema to foster understanding, saying, "When we sit in this room together...film brings us together because we can dive into, for a little moment in a very intimate way, into another person's world, another person's life, and we get challenged, we laugh with the person, we cry and experience his world and in the best way, hopefully we feel empathy. And from empathy, comes kindness, and we need that in this world right now."

Meanwhile, del Toro joked that "Canadians are modest and shy except on traffic and hockey," before praising the country as "a bastion of hope in the world right now." Elba, who received the TIFF Tribute Award in Impact Media, urged the audience to "feel something" about the pain the world is experiencing, for the sake of future generations.