Oscar winners, truth tellers, and Canadian perspectives lead the TIFF Docs line-up for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. TIFF announced the documentary slate, which includes arguably the largest Canuck contingent in recent years. Homegrown docs comprise six of the 23 features in TIFF Docs, joining previously announced films like Lilith Fair and Degrassi: Whatever It Takes. “I think the fact that TIFF has a chief programming officer in Anita Lee, who comes from a background of documentary producing, sets the tone in the organization for extra support and recognition,” says TIFF Docs programmer Thom Powers in an interview with POV.
Docs announced today include Modern Whore, directed by Nicole Bazuin. The doc looks at sex work through the lens of labour with a frank and funny perspective from Andrea Werhun, on whose experiences and book with Bazuin the film is based. Werhun also served as a consultant on Sean Baker’s Oscar winner Anora.
“The film stands out because we’ve seen so many films of the sex industry from outside the sex industry,” says Powers. “It is a refreshing, candid, and at times funny look, and very artfully made. Modern Whore has such a pop art style to it, and obviously a topic that attracts curiosity.”
Meanwhile, Still Single from directors Jamal Burger and Jukan Tateisi offers an energetic profile of Toronto-based sushi chef Masaki Saito, the city’s only cook with two Michelin stars. “It’s about a very charismatic chef who, keeping with title the film, points out that he’s still single after all of his success,” notes Powers. As with Modern Whore, Powers cites Still Single as a doc that could excite buyers. “That’s a film that’s working in a commercial vein given the unquenchable interest that viewers have in documentary.”
Another local story comes in Min Sook Lee’s deeply personal NFB doc There Are No Words. The film sees Lee reflect upon the loss of her mother, who died by suicide decades before. Lee invites her father to tell his story and illuminate painful stories of abuse, offering insights into difficult experiences while also sharing a side of family history she knew in fragments, if at all.
Powers notes that beyond the robust slate of Canadian productions, TIFF Docs also features two films that are technically American due to financing, but showcase Canadian perspectives: Michèle Stephenson’s True North, about the fight for Black liberation in Montreal from the 1960s, and Ben Proudfoot’s The Eyes of Ghana, about 93-year-old filmmaker Chris Hesse, who served as the personal cinematographer of revolutionary African leader Kwame Nkrumah. “Hesse was an eyewitness to an important chapter of Africa’s movement of Independence,” says Powers.
The latter ensures a moment of Canadian pride to begin the festival, if an opening night gala doc about John Candy isn’t enough, as The Eyes of Ghana will kick off the TIFF Docs slate. “It’s a love letter to the power of cinema, so it felt very fitting as an opening night selection,” says Powers. “And not to mention that the director is a two-time Oscar winning Canadian.” Proudfoot previously won Oscars for the documentary shorts The Last Repair Shop (2023) and The Queen of Basketball (2021). The Eyes of Ghana marks his sophomore feature after 2016’s Rwanda & Juliet. The doc boasts an impressive list of producers and executive producers including Barack and Michelle Obama.
The Eyes of Ghana marks one of seven films in the TIFF Docs line-up about the power of journalism at a time when news media is in crisis and under siege with Donald Trump suing Paramount, the Wall Street Journal, and Robert Murdoch (among others) while also devastating public funding for the distribution of information.
For example, Oscar winner Laura Poitras teams up with Mark Obenhaus for Cover-Up to tell the story of veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who ferreted out scoops about the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, hush money payments during the Watergate scandal, and the U.S. military’s torture and abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. The film, represented by Submarine for sales, marks a years-in-the-making effort that should engage audiences with the complementary, yet distinctive, traits of documentary and journalism—something that fans of Poitras know well thanks to her journalistic rigour and cinematic eye.
“One of the charms of the film is Hersh’s sometimes spiky personality. As someone who’s made it his career trying to get answers out of other people, there’s a fun irony in watching him try to deflect questions from journalists trying to get answers out of him,” says Powers. “But there’s a terrific line in the film where he says, ‘It’s hard to know who to trust. I barely trust you guys,’ meaning Laura and Mark.” Cover-up marks one of the most highly anticipated docs on the circuit this fall after Poitras’ All the Beauty and the Bloodshed won the Golden Lion at Venice and wowed the crowd at TIFF en route to an Oscar nomination and a Peabody win.
Also spotlighting the efforts and sacrifices of journalists is Love+War from Oscar winners Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin. The duo, who won the People’s Choice Award for Documentary for both Free Solo (2018) and The Rescue (2021), return to TIFF with the world premiere of this profile of Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario. “This film is following her closely over a couple of years that she was covering Ukraine,” says Powers. “A big question that the film is asking is, ‘How do you do this work and still be a present family member for your children and husband?’ The New Yorker journalist Dexter Filkins is interviewed in the film and points out that the stories of most people who do this work end in divorce, addiction, or death. One of the undercurrents in the film is to ask if someone can do it differently.”
Powers points out that such a question proves especially striking in A Simple Soldier from directors Juan Camilo Cruz and Artem Ryzhykov. The latter, a Ukrainian journalist and cinematographer, offers a lens through which audiences see combat. Powers notes that audiences may be familiar with Ryzhykov’s eye, as he shot the 2015 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner The Russian Woodpecker—a prescient look at a Ukrainian artist who survived Chernobyl only to predict future disaster. “In the same way that Russian Woodpecker was talking about serious things, although sometimes with a sense of humour, The Simple Soldier shares that power.”
Other docs about the power of journalism include the North American premiere of Orwell: 2+2=5 from TIFF regular Raoul Peck, and the world premiere of Nuns vs. The Vatican, a potent #MeToo tale of institutional ills, directed by Emmy winner Lorena Luciano. “This film has as its executive producer, Mariska Hargitay, who had a big year with My Mom Jayne,” says Powers. “In Nuns vs. the Vatican, a couple of the prominent characters are journalists who have been digging into a neglected subject: abuse of nuns in the Catholic Church.”
The theme of journalism, finally, finds a poignant note in Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk. The film by Sepideh Farsi has its North American premiere in TIFF Docs following its Cannes debut earlier this year. That Cannes’ announcement came one day before the film’s protagonist, Gaza-based journalist Fatma Hassona, was killed alongside members of her family when a missile struck their home. Powers calls it a “very profound film.”
Hassona, like other figures mentioned above, offers just one of the memorable characters whom audiences will meet in the TIFF Docs program. “Big personalities are another theme of the festival, and that will be true in the film Whistle,” observes Powers. The doc by Christopher Nelius (Storm Surfers 3D), repped by CAA for sales, takes audiences inside the intense world of competitive whistling.
“In the grand tradition of competition documentaries like Spellbound, Air Guitar Nation, or Speed Cubers, we get to watch people who are doing something for the love of it,” says Powers. “One of the whistlers is Molly Lewis who has whistled in Barbie and with Dr. Dre on a project. It’s one of those films where you really want to go out of your way to be there at TIFF to experience it in the room—I’m actually getting goosebumps just saying this because it’s going to be such a pleasure to watch the people in the film get their moments in the spotlight at the festival.”
Other personalities of note include Dr. Edith Widder, the subject of A Life Illuminated, directed by Tasha Van Zandt and from Sandbox Films (Fire of Love). “Dr. Widder has made it her life’s work studying the phenomenon of bioluminescence, the depths of the ocean past where the sun reaches,” explains Powers. “She has been studying creatures that make their own life, and this is a phenomenon that has rarely been captured in any satisfying way on film. In A Life Illuminated, we follow her on an expedition. She’s such an inspiring figure, particularly for other women scientists.”
The combination of adventure and big personality make A Life Illuminated a perfect pairing with The Balloonists, directed by John Dower (Thrilla in Manilla) and represented by Submarine and Anonymous Content. The doc demands the big screen experience for its look at Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones’ 1999 high-flying adventure. “If A Life Illuminated takes us to depths of the ocean, The Balloonists takes us up into the sky,” says Powers. “This is about the race amongst aeronauts to be the first team to navigate the globe in a balloon. The film is a very emotional ride, ultimately a very white knuckle ride, whether you know the ending or not.” Powers promises “incredible footage,” which should let the doc take flight for fans of thrill rides like last year’s Space Cowboy.
Audiences looking for adventure in the way of new and emerging voices can expect some thrilling encounters in TIFF Docs as well. Powers taps the North American premiere of The Tale of Silyan as one to watch. The doc marks the latest work from Tamara Kotevska, one of the directors of Honeyland, which scored a historic pair of Oscar nominations for Best Documentary and Best International Feature for North Macedonia. Powers says this film confirms Kotevska as a true talent.
“Any promise that people saw in Honeyland is fulfilled 10 times over in her new film, The Tale of Silyan. It’s set again in North Macedonia, looking at a farmer whose family has had to move away for economic reasons,” says Powers. “He stays behind on the land and he forms a friendship with a stork. Storks are prominent in the landscape and they’re absolutely beautifully photographed in this film.”
The programmer says the film should be a sure-fire crowd-pleaser for audiences drawn to docs about the connections people share with animals. That film has sales rep UTA behind it as it looks to find a home. They’re also handling fellow selection Canceled: The Paula Deen Story about the disgraced celebrity chef whose empire collapsed following the release of a deposition in which she admitted to using racial slurs. Audiences can expect a bold but playful touch from director Billy Corben, who is back at the festival after 2018’s Screwball and last year’s Men of War.
Also worth keeping an eye on is Iraqi filmmaker Zahraa Ghandour, whose Flana has its world premiere at the festival. Powers likens Flana to the TIFF ’23 hit The Mother of All Lies. “The filmmaker is trying to dig into questions that are unanswered about the state of people who have disappeared,” notes Powers.
Another fresh perspective comes from Sky Hopinka, whose Powwow People follows his shorts and 2020 breakthrough Malni: Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore in charting new terrain in non-fiction. “It’s kind of taking us into a powwow, not from an outsider’s perspective, but from an insider’s perspective,” says Powers. “The finale of the film is one unbroken 30 minute shot.”
Notably, one of TIFF Docs’ other formally daring works is Aki from Darlene Naponse (Stellar). The film features not a word of dialogue as it charts a visually essay about nature, life cycles, and non-verbal harmonies and discord on Earth. The doc joins Shane Belcourt’s Ni-Naadamaadiz: Red Power Rising and Peter Mettler’s seven-hour opus While the Green Grass Grows in rounding out the Canadian contingent.
The presence of Canadian titles, Oscar winning auteurs, and fresh talents points to a healthy slate, as does the whopping pool of over 1000 submissions the TIFF Docs team received. Powers can’t say if it’s a record, but he notes that it’s an encouraging figure. “I think it is a sign of health among documentary worldwide. The people making the films are not letting up. It’s the people distributing them that we need more effort from,” says Powers. “There’s quite a lot for the distribution community to dig into here, both in terms of films that could have big awards potential for them, like the Tale of Silyan, and films that could be high visibility titles on a streaming platform like The Balloonists, The Paula Deen Story, or Whistle.”
TIFF runs Sept. 4 to 14.
The 2025 TIFF Docs Line-up
A Life Illuminated | Tasha Van Zandt | USA World Premiere
A Simple Soldier | Juan Camilo Cruz, Artem Ryzhykov | Ukraine North American Premiere
Aki | Darlene Naponse | Canada World Premiere
Below the Clouds | Gianfranco Rosi | Italy International Premiere
Canceled: The Paula Deen Story | Billy Corben | USA World Premiere
Cover-Up | Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus | USA Canadian Premiere
Flana | Zahraa Ghandour | Iraq/France/Qatar World Premiere
LOVE+WAR | Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin | USA World Premiere
Modern Whore | Nicole Bazuin | Canada World Premiere
Ni-Naadamaadiz: Red Power Rising | Shane Belcourt | Canada World Premiere
Nuestra Tierra | Lucrecia Martel | Argentina/USA/Mexico/France/Denmark/Netherlands North American Premiere
Nuns vs. The Vatican | Lorena Luciano | USA World Premiere
Orwell: 2+2=5 | Raoul Peck | USA/France North American Premiere
Powwow People | Sky Hopinka | USA World Premiere
Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk | Sepideh Farsi | France/Palestine/Iran North American Premiere
Still Single | Jamal Burger, Jukan Tateisi | Canada World Premiere
The Balloonists | John Dower | USA/UK/Austria World Premiere
The Eyes of Ghana | Ben Proudfoot | USA World Premiere
The Tale of Silyan | Tamara Kotevska | North Macedonia North American Premiere
There Are No Words | Min Sook Lee | Canada World Premiere
True North | Michèle Stephenson | USA/Canada World Premiere
While the Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts | Peter Mettler | Canada/Switzerland World Premiere
Whistle | Christopher Nelius | Australia World Premiere
Correction: this article has been updated to reflect that Zahraa Ghandour is Iraqi. POV apologizes for the error.
