Medical emergency stops premiere of Sydney Sweeney movie at TIFF

A mid-screening medical emergency halted the Toronto International Film Festival world-premiere screening of Sydney Sweeney’s new Ron Howard-directed movie Eden on Saturday night, as its stars and crew watched from inside the city’s Roy Thomson Hall venue.

At around 7 p.m. local time, shortly after a scene involving childbirth, Entertainment Weekly observed a commotion happening on the ground level of the theater. The lights in the venue went on and several people could be seen carrying a person out of the venue.

In footage captured in the room by EW (above), Sweeney and costars Jude Law, Ana de Armas, and Daniel Brühl can be seen watching the incident unfold from their second-story balcony as the film is paused on the big screen.

A TIFF staffer addressed the crowd, informing audience members that a “medical emergency” had delayed the screening. The film resumed shortly after the person was taken out of the room and the rest of the screening and Q&A went on as planned. The status of the person who suffered the emergency is unknown.

When reached for comment, a representative for Toronto police told EW via email that “this was a medical call in the area of Roy Thompson Theatre just after 7 pm, and ambulance was dispatched” and that “police were not required.” A police officer outside the venue just after the incident took place told EW that fire crews and medical personnel were dispatched, but did not offer further details.

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EW has reached out to representatives for TIFF for more information.

Based on real events, Eden is a historical thriller about a group of post-Europeans who seek to start over in the 1930s by fleeing to a previously uninhabited land in the Galápagos Islands, but discover it’s far from paradise. Vanessa Kirby, Toby Wallace, and Felix Kammerer also star.