The Video Store Is Back for a Sequel

At any given edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, the 51st of which happened last month, you’re far more likely to spot an elongated line than Angelina Jolie or Jacob Elordi. Whether its rush lines full of would-be audience members hoping to snag a seat for a big premiere, or brand activation lovers waiting 15 minutes for a free cup of Lavazza coffee, queues that curl around the block populate the downtown thoroughfare for the duration of the fest. This year, however, one of the longest lines was for an establishment that is a far less common sight these days: a video store. 

The Criterion Collection launched its first-ever brick-and-mortar location as a limited engagement for this year’s festival. The boutique home entertainment label has been around since the mid-1980s, when it first put editions of classic films like Citizen Kane and King Kong on deluxe Laserdiscs (a precursor to the DVD that had to be flipped halfway through, like a vinyl record). Over the years — as it made the evolution to DVDs, then Blu-rays, and now 4K discs — it has become the go-to home for arthouse cinema on disc. 

Even as the collection has become a bit more populist in its bent — K-Pop Demon Hunters is one of its fall releases, orchestrated through a deal with Netflix — its products remain something of a fetish object for a certain segment of cinephiles who view entrance into the Collection as a stamp of importance. Many of these fans are the same young Letterboxd-addicted film fans who have recently been credited for saving the theatrical moviegoing experience. And if there’s one thing these young folks love as much as movies, it’s a socials-worthy photo-op. 

The Criterion video store stunt was dreamed up in collaboration with distribution company Blue Fox Entertainment Canada. Blue Fox became the exclusive distributor for Criterion in Canada after purchasing distributor Unobstructed View in 2025, rebranding it as Cinema Cellar. “We really saw how everybody was reacting to physical media in general, but also specifically with Criterion,” says Ian Goggins, executive vice-president of Blue Fox. “And as we started to look at office space — we have a warehouse north of the city that houses all of our inventory and we do our distribution to customers and for our website — we realized that there was an opportunity for a retail location.”