TIFF announced further details for the third annual TIFF Next Wave Film Festival (February 14–16), including the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival Mural, and the lineup of special guests who will be in attendance during the festival. Targeted for young movie lovers aged 14 through 18, the festival is steered by the TIFF Next Wave Committee, a volunteer advisory team made up of 12 youth dedicated to bringing quality film programming and film-related events to youth across the city.

New this year, the exhibition title wall in the atrium of TIFF Bell Lightbox will become the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival Mural between Friday, February 14 at 5 p.m. and Sunday, February 16 at 10 p.m. This unique and creative space will be available as a mural on which teenagers from across the city can share responses to the question, “What film inspires you?”

“We’re thrilled to welcome teens to the festival and a participatory mural in our main lobby is a fun and unique way for them to engage with the event,” said Emily Scheer, Senior Manager, Family & Youth Programming, TIFF Bell Lightbox. “Toronto is a great city of movie lovers and we’re looking forward to teens inspiring us and each other in a thoughtful and creative exchange of ideas during the festival.”

The festival is pleased to be collaborating with two Toronto-based artists for the mural: Pete Ryan and Ian Finn Gray. Ryan is an award-winning illustrator, teacher and sometimes art director whose work has been featured widely in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Gray studied art direction/design at OCAD University, but his primary focus is now painting and fine art. His work pulls great inspiration from all forms of street art, as well as post-modernist art in New York throughout the ’80s and ’90s.

“The concept for the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival Mural came from what hangs inside a school locker,” said Ryan. “Murals invite participation from everyone, and the locker concept allowed us to take something from teen’s everyday life and turn it into something extraordinary that will live on the main wall of one of the coolest cultural organizations in the city for the duration of the festival.” Gray added: “Working with the TIFF Next Wave Committee has been an incredibly inspiring experience, and we can’t wait to see how the mural evolves with the artistic participation of teens in the city.”

In the week leading up to the festival, the 12 members of the TIFF Next Wave Committee will post their thoughts on film on the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival Mural. The mural will be complemented by an online, Instagram-based contest that invites users of all ages to tweet or upload a “selfie” along with the title of the film that inspires them the most. Entries tagged with #TIFFNextWave on Twitter, Instagram, or Tumblr will be collected starting today, Monday, February 3, until Sunday, February 16. The winning submission will win a four-pack of tickets to a TIFF Next Wave-tagged film during the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

An exciting slate of special guests will be in attendance during the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival to introduce the films and engage in post-screening discussions with teens. Confirmed guests to date include triple-threat actor/writer/producer Taylor Hill and director Gary Hawes of Leap 4 Your Life (2013), a spirited mockumentary about a community dance competition; directors Andrew and Adam Gray of Fly Colt Fly (2013), a documentary that follows the story of teenage fugitive Colton Harris-Moore, whose ability to escape capture by stealing airplanes made him a modern-day folk hero to a new generation; Tali Barde, director of For No Eyes Only (2013), a stylish and thrilling update of Hitchcock’s Rear Window in which a teenage computer whiz is caught in a web of voyeurism, intrigue and murder; and Destiny Ekaragha, who makes her feature-length directorial debut with Gone Too Far! (2013), the story of a Nigerian-born, London-raised teenager who has his streetwise style cramped by the arrival of his brother from the homeland.

Additional guests this year include Jean-Michel Dissard, one of the directors of I Learn America (2013), a documentary that follows five teenagers in their senior year at a Brooklyn public high school dedicated to recent immigrants from all over the world; as well as Rob Meyer, director of A Birder’s Guide to Everything (2013), a quirky and heartfelt coming-of-age comedy about a quartet of high-school bird-watching fanatics who hit the road in search of a rare duck.

For more info on TIFF Next Wave please visit the website and to view the 2014 trailers click here