Vancouver-born Seth Rogen joins TIFF’s inaugural market Summit lineup
Seth Rogen attends the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in January. The Vancouver-born actor and producer has joined the speaker lineup for the inaugural TIFF: The Market Summit in September.
Photo: Colleen Sturtevant/WikiPortraits, CC BY 4.0.
The actor and producer will discuss two TIFF films, including an animated adaptation of a Vancouver cartoonist’s acclaimed graphic memoir.
Vancouver-born actor, writer and producer Seth Rogen will be among the headline speakers at the Toronto International Film Festival’s new industry market next month, adding another strong British Columbia presence to the festival’s expanded 2026 program.
TIFF announced its final Summit lineup this week for the inaugural TIFF: The Market, which runs Sept. 10 to 16 alongside the Toronto International Film Festival.
Rogen and Oscar-winning British filmmaker Danny Boyle have joined the Market’s Visionaries program, a series of moderated conversations with filmmakers and industry leaders. Actor Colman Domingo is among the additions to Perspectives, a series examining issues affecting the international screen industry.
For Rogen, the Toronto appearance comes during an especially busy festival.
He is connected to two films selected for TIFF this year and is expected to discuss both during his Summit appearance, along with other projects including the upcoming second season of his Apple TV+ comedy The Studio.
One is Babies, written and directed by Lauren Miller Rogen. Seth Rogen stars opposite Anna Kendrick as a married couple confronting the question of whether they want to become parents.
The comedy will have its world premiere Sept. 12 at Roy Thomson Hall and features an ensemble cast that includes Issa Rae, Dan Stevens, Sharon Stone and David Strathairn.
The other film brings an additional Vancouver connection.
Tangles, directed by Vancouver-based filmmaker Leah Nelson, is an animated adaptation of Vancouver writer and cartoonist Sarah Leavitt’s 2010 graphic memoir Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me.
Seth Rogen and Lauren Miller Rogen are among the film’s producers, with Rogen’s Point Grey Pictures and Miller Rogen’s LYLAS Pictures among the production companies. Rogen also voices a character in the film.
The voice cast includes Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Abbi Jacobson, Bryan Cranston, Beanie Feldstein, Samira Wiley, Sarah Silverman, Bowen Yang and Wanda Sykes.
Leavitt is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing, where she has taught comics since 2012. UBC says Tangles was the first comic nominated for a Writers’ Trust of Canada Award and has since been published internationally and used in the growing field of comics and medicine.
The movie also has production roots in Vancouver. Giant Ant, the Vancouver animation studio co-founded by Nelson, is one of the companies behind the adaptation alongside Point Grey Pictures, LYLAS Pictures and Monarch Media.
Rogen himself was born and raised in Vancouver and began performing stand-up comedy in the city as a teenager before moving to Los Angeles. He and longtime collaborator Evan Goldberg later named Point Grey Pictures after the Vancouver high school they attended.
His appearance comes as TIFF makes a significant expansion beyond its traditional festival operations.
TIFF: The Market is intended to establish Toronto as a formal international marketplace for buying, selling, financing and developing screen projects. The inaugural edition will include more than 70 Summit sessions and events and will extend beyond feature films into television, gaming and immersive media.
British Columbia companies will also be represented directly at the new market. Creative BC says 10 B.C. companies and representatives are attending with support from its Passport to Markets program, bringing producers and screen-industry professionals from the province into the new international marketplace.
The 51st Toronto International Film Festival runs Sept. 10 to 20, with TIFF: The Market taking place Sept. 10 to 16.
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