Today isn’t my day to cover the festival, but I need to pick up my press pass and make sure I know where everything will take place, so I head to Roppongi Hills, where the bulk of the festival will be held. (The screenings are divided between Roppongi Hills and Shibuya Bunkamura Hall, about 10 minutes apart on the subway.)

As I walk through Roppongi subway station, I see a line of posters for the films that will be screened at the festival, all leading to Roppongi Hills. This must be TIFF’s interpretation of the yellow brick road. The beautiful, modern space is enlivened with the trademark TIFF posters, with its red background and “Moooooooooovie!!” slogan.

I get my pass in the 49-floor Academy Hills building, and decide to do some looking around. The stage appearance for the Japanese film, Peeping Tom, is starting, so I enter the crowded theatre. The cast exchange pleasantries about the film, a supposed “literary romance horror.” I say supposed because as soon as the meet-and-greet is over, the horde of photographers and other media people all file out. The screening itself, it appears, is available only to the ticket-buying general audience.

Undeterred, I scan the press schedule and see that French director Jérôme Bonnell’s Waiting for Someone is playing in Shibuya, with a Q&A session afterwards. Opting to take the free TIFF shuttle bus that will take me directly to Bunkamura Hall instead of riding two stops on the subway, I arrive at the theater 20 minutes later to catch the last third of the film. A character-driven story set in a small town in France, the intertwining stories and naturalistic setting were compelling enough to make me want to see the first two-thirds in a later screening.

In the Q&A session, members of the audience were allowed to ask questions to Bonnell, which were translated into French, and then into English. Bonnell scored points with the audience early on by telling a story of how Waiting for Someone was born in Japan. He was at the French Film Festival in Yokohama a couple of years ago when he met actress Emmanuelle Devos, who was promoting her 2005 film La Moustache. He presented her with the screenplay for Waiting, and she ended up playing one of the lead characters.

Bonnell revealed interesting tidbits on his filmmaking methods, including how he always talks to his actors about their characters before shooting, the extensive preparation allowing the actors to improvise once filming starts. A question about the names of the cute dogs in the film turned into a confession of how they were not originally in the screenplay, but he decided to put them in when he saw them in the café where the film was shot. He got actress Natalie Boutefeu (who starred in his previous film Les Yeuxs clairs) to do a cameo appearance as the dog walker.

The short, 30-minute session allowed for the rare moment of a filmmaker directly communicating with their audience. The audience’s thoughtful questions and the director’s equally thoughtful answers made for a mutually entertaining and informative experience.