The Canadian Sport Film Festival brings bold, provocative sport stories to the screen at TIFF Lightbox, but its old website carried none of that energy. We redesigned it around big colour and cinematic visuals, and built it so the festival’s own team can update lineups, screenings, and content year after year without a developer.
The Challenge
A film festival lives and dies by how it makes you feel, and the festival’s old site made you feel nothing. It was dated, flat, and completely disconnected from the energy of the event itself. The brand deserved better, and so did the films.
There was a second problem underneath the visual one. As a nonprofit, the festival runs on a tight budget and a small team. That’s a common challenge in nonprofit website design: the site needs to look professional and perform well without becoming another thing the organization depends on an outside developer to manage. The program changes every year, screenings get added, lineups shift. A site that needed a developer for every update was never going to work.
What We Built
We handled the full website design, rebuilt around bold colour and big, cinematic visuals. The look is meant to feel as dynamic as a night at the festival, pulling visitors into the lineup before they’ve read a single word. The films, screenings, and stories finally get the stage they deserve.
Just as important, we built it to be run by the festival, not by us. Their team can update lineups, add screenings, and refresh content on their own schedule. No developer, no invoices for routine changes, no bottleneck in the weeks before the festival when everything moves fast.
The Result
The festival now has a site that matches the boldness of its programming and costs almost nothing to keep current. Each new season, the team updates the lineup themselves and the site is ready for launch.
