The gala screening was scheduled for a 10 p.m. start at Roy Thomson Hall, one of TIFF’s premier venues. The documentary’s co-directors Carlos López Estrada and Zac Manuel and editor Andrew Morrow arrived on the red carpet first, posing with fans that lined the entryway. But as their subject, pop superstar Lil Nas X, pulled up in his car to join them, organizers were informed that a bomb threat had been called in and the artist was told to hold, sources told Variety. The threat specifically targeted the rapper for being a Black queer artist, one source added.

A spokesperson for TIFF said: “Earlier this evening, we were made aware by the Toronto Police Service of an investigation in the vicinity of the red carpet for the ‘Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero’ screening. Our standard security measures remained in place during this time and the screening commenced with a slight delay. To our knowledge, this was a general threat and not directed at the film or the artist.”

In its 46-year history, TIFF has been relatively incident free when it comes to security.

In 2017, the festival invested in tighter cybersecurity measures after a hack crippled box office capabilities and citywide WiFi connections at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. In 2018, Toronto introduced bomb-sniffing dogs and bag checks at screenings in response to local terror attacks (including a public shooting, and the killing of 10 innocents when a driver purposely crashed a van into a sidewalk).

In interview ahead of the documentary’s premiere, Nas talked about the impact he hopes the film will have on audiences, especially as it addresses issues of representation.

My Book:

Iconic Gay Directors. By Emanuel Levy (Columbia University Press).

“I know in my lifetime, while I’m here, I’m going to do my best to make the ceiling unreachable to where we can go as Black queer people,” Nas said. “And I mean unreachable as, like, it can go above and beyond.”