Maria by Callas (France, 113 min.) Dir. Tom Volf Programme: TIFF Docs (North American Premiere) Every good diva deserves a doc portrait. Maria Callas receives a meticulously curated and assembled appreciation in this archival tapestry by director, photographer, and actor Tom Volf. Maria by Callas is an impressively assembled first feature and an obvious labour of love from a
Diamantino (Portugal/France/Brazil, 97 min.) Dir. Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt Programme: Midnight Madness (North American Premiere) Abrantes and Schmidt are part of a New York avant-garde film scene comprised mostly of Cooper Union grads that includes sometime collaborators Alexander Carver, Benjamin Crotty and James N. Kienitz Wilkins. They’re all in their 30s now and their
TIFF’s team of doc programmers led by Thom Powers more than matches the top offerings from Hot Docs, providing hit material for a public that responds not just at the festival but throughout the year.
"This film tries to project the future, but in doing so, it looks at the past," says Igor Drljača on his documentary The Stone Speakers, which offers an unconventional of Bosnian tourist sites.
Did concerns over taxes and French-language production at Netflix prove to be Mélanie Joly’s undoing as heritage minister?
Jamie Miller’s Prince’s Tale, Sophy Romvari’s duo Norman Norman and Pumpkin Movie, and Sofia Bohdanowicz’s Veslemøy’s Song highlight some of the newer voices in Canadian documentary. The films are loosely connected by themes of mortality, history, legacy, and memory, but they share a greater connection in illustrating the originality of vision that can arise when a new generation of talent steps
TIFF’s annual Wavelengths programme is one of few opportunities for Torontonians (and Canadians) to see work on the bleeding edge of film aesthetics in such a concentrated burst. It’s also, I would argue, one of the city’s few truly world-class cultural events, and that’s thanks to Andréa Picard, the section’s programmer for the past 13
Robert Greene’s new film Bisbee ’17 is about the performance of history in the present.
Shasha Nakhai’s feature documentary debut Take Light is an absorbing character-driven study of the country’s fight for sustainability amidst post-colonial corruption. Nakhai’s film highlights ordinary citizens caught within a power struggle both literal and figurative.
In Canada, it’s called fair dealing. In the States, fair use. But as for hard guidelines, there aren’t any.