Established in 2001, the festival is held the first weekend of December and includes juried competitive sections, the Borsos Awards, and the Pandora Audience Award.
[3] As of 2015, the Whistler Film Festival bills itself as "Canada's coolest film festival"[4][5] and has been increasingly attracting more distributors and sales agents.
[9] Paul Gratton, served as the festival's Director of Programming from 2012-2023 with Robin Smith filling the role from 2024-present.
[6] Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, the 2020 festival was staged entirely online.
[2] While most other Canadian film festivals which were staged online in 2020 geoblocked their service so that only viewers within the festival's home province were able to watch the films, Whistler made virtually its entire lineup available across Canada.