Even days before the film premiered to a packed house on Sunday night, A Star Is Born was the undisputed crowd-pleaser of this years Toronto International Film Festival. No other movie has held onto the same level of buzz and deep affection as Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, which casts Lady Gaga in a role that’s been played by Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland in previous tellings of this warhorse of a Hollywood story.

But as preordained as it may all seem—a movie with A-list stars getting film-festival attention? Have you ever?—A Star Is Born’s rollout has been remarkably precise and effective. Before, we wondered whether this outsize Hollywood gamble would get any major nominations; now, it’s the kind of guaranteed hit that has people openly speculating about how many Oscars it might win. That victory, like most Oscar victories, will come at the end of a carefully constructed campaign—and A Star Is Born’s performance this week has been an example of exactly how it’s done.

The film’s climb began, as most campaigns do, with a trailer—released on June 6 and viewed over 7 million times on YouTube so far. The preview had a long life as a meme months before any audience got to see A Star Is Born. It was a trailer as an earworm, or a camp event—and regardless of the film’s quality, it promised something unmissable, from a stripped-down Lady Gaga performance to the awkward spectacle of another A-list actor trying on his director hat.

In late July, the Venice Film Festival announced that A Star Is Born would premiere there August 31—a huge vote of confidence from studio Warner Bros., giving the film days of buzz leading up to its trip to Toronto. When Lady Gaga arrived in Venice, perched like a high-fashion mermaid on the side of a gondola and then swathed in pink feathers on the red carpet, she had a whole news cycle to herself. Rumors circulated that Cooper had widely screened the film for industry friends in the weeks before the premiere, but the first American critics to see it were the select few who trekked to Venice—a sense of FOMO worthy of a Supreme drop, or maybe an intimate Lady Gaga concert.

The early reviews of A Star Is Born were positive, but cautious; Vulture’s Emily Yoshida praised only the first half, and at RogerEbert.com, Glenn Kenny called it “Big Movie Studio Craft.” (He meant it as a compliment.) But they were positive enough. Then, one week after its Venice premiere, A Star Is Born schedule its first screening for press and industry at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Seemingly every critic coming to town took note. By 8 A.M., easily 100 people were in line for the 9:15 screening, snaking through the TIFF Bell Lightbox, clutching coffee and hoping—but not necessarily knowing—that Cooper and Lady Gaga were going to make this worth it.

The massive press-screening line was step one. The explosion of excited tweets following the screening was step two. But the true genius of A Star Is Born’s rollout may have been the seemingly nonstop press screenings at TIFF that ensued. With Cooper and Gaga in town for the film’s international junket, three studio-hosted screenings a day were scheduled for three days in a row, meaning that the tweets and rave reviews would continue trickling in, even after that first bunch of critics moved on. (Most films at Toronto have multiple press screenings, but rarely several before the film’s official premiere.) Festival fever might have accounted for one set of raving critics, or even two. But as A Star Is Born played over and over, its staying power cemented itself.