TIFF disclosing possibly disturbing content ? Advice
When I submitted my short film to the Toronto International Film Festival, they asked if it contained any content that TIFF's screening team should be advised of ahead of viewing (such as drug use, explicit sex or violence, and many other things). I marked a few of them: mature themes, references to suicide, and homophobic language.
The film deals with immense grief after learning their gay lover has committed suicide, and there is a scene where some vile characters say homophobic slurs (quite literally locker-room talk).
It is a very pro LGBTQ+ film, but now my co-producer is worried that the film could get immediately disqualified because I checked these boxes. And well now I am a little paranoid that perhaps because some of these boxes were checked that the film might automatically be rejected without even being seen. Or that AI could be used in their submissions process and it could disqualify the film without understanding the context of the scene: the people saying homophobic slurs are clearly bad characters and our protagonist is LGBTQ+.
My co-producer has also advised me for future submissions to purposefully omit that there is homophobic language used even if the festival specifically asks about it.
I'm hoping some of you could help shed some light on this and hopefully calm my worries and provide some advice.
Thanks!