Jaime Rebanal has dedicated much of his life to analog film. He attends nearly every celluloid movie screening he can find in Toronto — sometimes watching several a day.
Rebanal, a filmmaker himself, is 27 — meaning that when he was growing up, Hollywood was already dominated by digital technology. Even so, he says he has been “enraptured” by film.
“When you’re seeing something on film, there’s a lot of fine details that you don’t get digitally,” he said at an event at the Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) Lightbox in Toronto about film formats. The event was held as part of a retrospective on director Christopher Nolan, ahead of the release of his newest film The Odyssey. It even featured a large Imax camera that presenters noted was Nolan’s favourite.
Young people are often stereotyped as phone-addicted shut-ins who won’t date, drink, read books or have kids. Yet some of them are behind an analog film renaissance at movie theatres, as they look for immersive, community-focused experiences you can’t get online or at home.
And Imax, known for its towering screens and enveloping audio, is perhaps the best example of this. The Odyssey is the first narrative feature shot entirely on 70-mm Imax film.
“They know about the brand and they know the brand means quality,” said Mark Welton, global president at Imax Theatres. “So, you know, we’re seeing tons of demand [from] young people.”
The audience knows what it wants
The entertainment industry was hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and the actors’ and writers’ strikes after that, leaving executives scrambling to lure audiences back into theatres.
Young people are at the forefront of that resurgence: 85 per cent of Canadians under 35 are moviegoers, according to a 2025 Telefilm Canada report, compared to 54 per cent of those 35 and up. Meanwhile, just 12 per cent of the population accounted for half of all admissions, meaning more viewers were repeat customers.
That’s true for analog film screenings, as well. When TIFF showed a 70-mm screening of Top Gun, a third of the audience was under 25, a spokesperson said. For recent showings of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Vertigo, the figure sat at just under 30 per cent.
“Gen-Z … are into the materiality of media, because they grew up, you know, watching films on their phones,” said Janine Marchessault, a professor at York University who led a research project into the early history of Imax.
“This new generation are really interested in the capabilities of film as a medium.”
Much of the film industry shifted to shooting and projecting movies digitally because doing so is cheaper and more forgiving than analog film. But the resolution of large-format film still outperforms most digital cameras.
Unlike digital, analog film is made up of crystals rather than pixels, which is what creates its characteristic grain. This can be simulated digitally — but on celluloid, the grain pattern is unique to each shot.
Young people are exploring the fashions, movies and especially the music of the 1940s.
Marchessault believes there is a bifurcated audience for analog film: the boomers who recognize its value from growing up with it, as well as a new group of young people, who have independently learned to appreciate the medium.
“There’s a whole cinephile culture that’s been going up for a while,” she said. “There’s an audience that is now demanding beautiful images, high resolution, good sound.”
TIFF has noticed a similar trend, said its chief programming officer Anita Lee.
“Often, independent arthouse cinema is outperforming our more commercial, theatrical releases.”
Meanwhile, the communal aspect of watching a movie is a big draw for a cohort whose adolescence was defined by lockdowns and physical isolation.
“I do really feel like this is all part of a similar kind of desire again for material reality and wanting to experience something that feels authentic,” she said.
Viral knowledge
Imax’s Welton credits social media with teaching young people technical knowledge — like, say, how to differentiate between 70-mm and 35-mm screenings, where the former is much larger and has higher resolution compared to the latter’s standard aspect ratio.
He cited director Ryan Coogler as an example, who while promoting his film Sinners last year, released a video explaining the different film formats and their aspect ratios. It might seem like industry jargon, but the clip garnered more than one million views on YouTube.
WATCH | Ryan Coogler explains aspect ratios:
“I think there’s just a lot more information out there for young people to understand it,” said Welton. “And they make it very understandable … when it’s on social media.”
Coogler’s video was a big part of how Govind Chandak, 25, became interested in the medium.
He was curious why a director would seek it out, given its expense. He then saw Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another on 70-mm Imax, which he described as “probably the best film presentation I’ve ever seen.”
Now, he’s part of a movie club on the messaging platform Discord that he says has some 1,000 members. Many of them regularly meet up to watch and discuss films. For The Odyssey, a segment of the group co-ordinated to buy tickets at the exact same time.
“Honestly, I’m just someone that appreciates visual quality quite a lot,” said Chandak, after the film event in Toronto. “So for me, watching that … resolution at the Imax theatre is, I don’t know.
“I can’t explain it; you have to go in.”
Many people — even those well versed in the technical aspects — who spoke to CBC News described analog film with near-mystical reverence.
One presenter at the TIFF event noted: “A comparison that kind of stuck with me once was … digital is the way you sort of experience reality, but film is the way you remember it.”
At the end of the talk, particularly keen attendees crowded the stage to speak with the presenters. But the Nolan-favoured Imax camera proved just as popular, as people gathered in throngs to get a closer look at the device.
Some pulled out their phones, flipped the camera and took a selfie with it.
