It’s impossible to hit every party during TIFF, so we handpicked 20 women, whose style and charisma we admire, to be our spies. They’re red carpet ready in five minutes, always on the guest list, and help bring a party to life with their magnetic personalities and endless energy. Each day they’ll report back the juicy details from the night before

Name: Hannah Cheesman aka Hannah Shazaam aka Tiff Party Girl Supreme Sandwich

Describe your involvement with TIFF: Actoress, mover, shaker, network-maker, blogger (First Weekend Club), #1 dancer.

The parties you attended last night: We premiered our feature, The Animal Project, so I attended a few things. Pre-premiere was the BIRKS Women in Film celebration (surrounded by never-affordable diamonds and people like Paul Haggis, Deepa Mehta, etc.), red carpet, and drinking; post-Animal Project fete at The Monarch Tavern (with Orphan Black writer extraordinaire Karen Walton and End of Time‘s Peter Mettler). Then I drove around aimlessly with two friends until we landed at The Thompson (you know, it happens when you’re wearing a fancy pants outfit).

What did you wear? Ladies, lemme tell you. RENT FROCK REPEAT will change your life. I wore ABS hot pink, all sequin, open-back, massive shoulder-padded mini. Killer. You WEAR this dress, you don’t wear this dress. Gosh. I felt purdy. With another Rent Frock Repeat rental: hot pink shoes (Aldo. You know). Earrings: A wee shop in Montreal. Purse: falling apart Value Village wallet. 

Describe the crowd using just 3 words:
Birks: Stuffy. Fancy. Fun.
Monarch: Artsy. Pals. Randoms.
Thompson: Thompson. Thompson. Thompson. 

Hear anything interesting? Weird? Scott Thompson and I hit it off hardcore. He had food on his shoe and I dubbed him HUNGRY TOES. He later texted me “Lady Gams.” And I then called him “Scotch.” At the party we made jokes during speeches, and lamented our mutually broken left knees. He confided he would have preferred to have been a dancer, but that was too queer even for him, growing up. We agreed his knees would have been worse off today, had he gone that direction.

Celebs in attendance: Tatiana Maslany; Paul Haggis; Ingrid Veninger; Deepa Mehta; Karen Walton; Peter Stebbings; Peter Mettler; rising stars Johnathan Sousa and Evelyn Brochu; Scott Thompson; Aaron Abrams; Carrie-Lynn Neales.

What you ate: Tiny hors d’oeuvres that included moussed mushrooms, very salty latkes with roast beef, and other amuse-bouches.

What you drank:

Bubbly. French Martini. Cosmo. In that order. Then only screwdrivers with soda. What about it? 

Which statement best describes the party:

  1. Best TIFF night EVER!
  2. WTF just happened? O-M-G….omg. GAHHHH!
  3. Celebrities? Who cares, we danced our asses off and met people from Denmark. So there.
  4. I liked the party favours but not sure it was really a “TIFF” party.
  5. Party was a-ok but then shit got real at the after-after party. Er, not for the internet.
  6. I think I saw someone famous. I dunno.
  7. OB-NOXXXXXXXX-IOUS! Way too many egos.
  8. The night would have been better had I stayed home to organize my accounting. Snoozefest!

#1 or #2.

If you could do it again, would you change anything? My TIFF motto has been: See an interesting person? Walk up and say hey. SO many good things came from this. And it’s been hella successful. So, the only thing I would change? Always: more cool people, rad dudes and dudettes, people with opinions, piss n vinegar, fervour, something to add or say, people way better than me, people with tons to offer. But. I met plenty of those, too. So I recant. No changes.