Scanning the diverse selection of films at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), it’s clear that a breakthrough is taking place. Docs have truly arrived as one of the leading forms of expression in film. As indie film dramas drift into irrelevance replaced by long-form television series—featured at TIFF as Primetime quality programs like The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal—there’s a noticeable shift towards making stylish non-fiction films, which are growing in appeal with audiences and filmmakers.
And why not? In a world that is becoming increasingly strange, where “fake news” and AI call into question whether what we perceive is a commonly accepted “reality,” doesn’t it make sense to respond by craving a heaping dose of truth-telling? Perhaps that’s why we’re going to be offered a wonderful number of documentaries during the upcoming festival.
A proviso must be placed here: this introductory appreciation of documentaries at TIFF does not include reviews. Indeed, I may not have seen every film commented upon here. This piece is a rumination on documentaries at TIFF and how they fit into a wider level of understanding of what documentaries can mean in our dramatically changing society.
TIFF is offering non-fiction features in categories beyond TIFF Docs. Two of the most innovative and consequential musicians performing today—Bruce Springsteen and Pharrell Williams—star in films in what TIFF perceives as being the more prestigious categories of, respectively, Galas and Special Presentations. Given the transformative, but very different, power of each artist, it’s fitting that present-day docs can offer divergent approaches to show their appeal in cinema. Springsteen, working with long-time collaborator Thom Zimny offers a verité -styled “road diary,” with personal reminisces by the “Boss,” while Morgan Neville’s extraordinary work with Pharrell is a true hybrid—a LEGO animated doc, which can present unique insights into the creative process of a brilliant composer, producer and performer.
Let us now praise TIFF Docs, a category that Thom Powers resurrected well over a decade ago and is now programmed by him, Dorota Lech, and a number of other worthies. There are a number of thought provoking docs being presented in this section at TIFF. The programmers deserve kudos for all of their fine work.
The thing about docs is: they do deal with topics that affect us, personally and politically. Take toxic masculinity—a topic that has to be confronted. It exists in every society and is the subject of docs and dramas. We see it in Moldova with Tata (Father), in Iran in A Sisters’ Tale, and in Ireland in Blue Road. It can affect your family—and perhaps particularly your daughters—whether the society you were raised in was Catholic, Muslim, Indigenous or formerly Communist (and with no official dogma beyond Marx). Abuse, both physical and psychological, can affect one forever.
The power of documentaries comes through in films that deal with genuine social and emotional issues. Admittedly a drama can do it too, but the advantage is that a documentary can pirouette more easily from the particularities of a fraught situation to a general concern for society. One can only hint at the power of these films, all of which are at TIFF. (After all, I may not have seen them and certainly can’t review them—yet.)
Blue Road is a profile of an underappreciated writer, Edna O’Brien. Breaking free from a repressive Catholic background, O’Brien wrote with spirit, insight and sensual appreciation about the lives of young Irish women in the Sixties, a time when such prose—even if it was brilliant, and it was—would only elicit the angriest response from her homeland. Filmmaker Sinead O’ Shea (Pray for Our Sinners) worked closely with O’Brien, who just passed away this summer, to make a film about a woman who was a controversial presence in British and Irish society for decades, and who left a legacy of extraordinary books.
Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is a new film by Raoul Peck, who has made it his life’s work to resurrect extraordinary injustices wrought on Black individuals, whether in the Congo (Lumumba), the United States (I Am Not Your Negro on James Baldwin) or now, on a brilliant South African photographer. Cole was a true artist, one of the finest photographers of the Sixties, a high point in the medium. His book, House of Bondage, is a classic: a depiction of life under apartheid—the most extreme form of racism—which existed in South Africa until the early Nineties when Nelson Mandela broke the system and created a democratic state.
Cole’s tragic story has never truly been told until now. Peck has acquired his photos—those taken in South Africa in the Fifties and Sixties and the ones he shot in America in the late Sixties and throughout the Seventies. It shows the powerful artistic intent of Cole, who was an immense humanist with a true photographic eye and appreciation of where to show people in often fraught situations. (One can see many of Cole’s photos here.)
Suffice it to say that documentary aficionados shouldn’t just anticipate profiles of Springsteen and Pharrell; they should be looking out for Edna O’ Brien and Ernest Cole with as much eagerness.
Those films and so many more will make TIFF memorable. Certainly, for documentaries—and for dramas, experimental films and animation as well.
