Documentaries about journalists Seymour Hersh, Lynsey Addario and Fatma Hassona are heading to the 50th edition of the Toronto Intl. Film Festival.
TIFF‘s Docs program gets underway Sept. 4 and will feature 23 feature docs from 18 countries. The program will open with the world premiere of two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Ben Proudfoot’s “The Eyes of Ghana,” about 93-year-old Chris Hesse, a cinematographer who served as the personal filmmaker for Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah. Barack and Michelle Obama-led shingle Higher Ground executive produced the doc.
“The film is a love letter to filmmaking and the efforts of Chris Hesse to not only document a chapter of history, but also his work to preserve that footage,” said Thom Powers, lead TIFF documentary programmer.
Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras and co-director Mark Obenhaus’s “Cover Up,” about investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, will make its Canadian premiere at TIFF after a world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. “Cover Up” chronicles Hersh’s reporting on some of the most damning constitutional wrongdoings and cover-ups, including the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and systematic tortures at Abu Ghraib. Poitras, who won the Oscar for best feature documentary in 2015 for “Citizenfour” and was nominated for an Academy Award for her 2022 doc “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” has been striving to make a film about Hersh for the last two decades.
“He finally, recently, said yes,” said Powers, who has been programming TIFF’s doc section for 20 years.
“One way in which we’ve come full circle since the time I started is that I think there was a spirit of festival going into the 2006 edition where you felt like, ‘I better go to this festival because I might never have a chance to see this film again,’” said Powers. “Then in the last 10 years, we got a false sense that everything is available, and now I think it’s starting to dawn on people that some of the films that you might see at your local film festival, TIFF included, you might not have a chance to see them again.”
National Geographic is set to distribute Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi’s latest doc “LOVE+WAR” about Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario. The Oscar-winning filmmakers, who recently announced their divorce, explore Addario’s two-decade-long career reporting on issues including Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, the Libyan crisis, and genocide in Darfur.
Sepideh Farsi’s “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” is another doc in the TIFF lineup about a photojournalist. The film will make its North American premiere at the fest. About 25-year-old Gaza photojournalist Fatma Hassona, “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” is the story of a woman under siege by constant bombing. On April 16, a day after the movie’s Cannes Film Festival debut was announced, Hassouna was killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Variety film critic Siddhant Adlakha said that Farsi “takes an unusual visual approach to capturing Hassona, but one that eventually pays dividends. Using one smartphone to film another, the Iranian director creates layers of distance between the audience and her subject — or rather, mimics the actual divide between the two women — during their many WhatsApp video chats. Farsi cannot enter Gaza, and Hassona cannot leave, leaving pixelated calls with delayed audio (owing to Hassona’s poor internet connection) as their only way to connect.”
Also making its North American debut at TIFF is Raoul Peck’s “Orwell: 2+2=5,” which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. About the author of “1984” and “Animal Farm,” Oscar-nominated Peck (“I Am Not Your Negro)” interweaves historical clips, readings from Orwell’s diary, cinematic references, and modern-day footage to craft “Orwell: 2+2=5.” The film features Damian Lewis as the voice of Orwell.
Other notable titles in this year’s TIFF doc lineup include “John Dower’s The Balloonists,” about adventurers who set out to circle the globe in a balloon; Tasha Van Zandt’s ,”A Life Illuminated,” about marine biologist Dr. Edie Widder; Christopher Nelius’ “Whistle” about champion whistlers; Lorena Luciano’s “Nuns vs. the Vatican” about new allegations of abuse inside the Catholic Church; Billy Corben’s “Canceled: The Paula Deen Story” a film that re-investigates the scandal behind the celebrity chef; and Nicole Bazuin’s “Modern Whore,” which explores the sex industry and is based on the book of the same name by Andrea Werhun and Bazuin.
Despite industry-wide budget cuts and a shortage of doc distributors for nonfiction social issue fare, Powers winnowed the list of 23 docs from over 1,000 submissions.
“It certainly feels jarring, compared to the very prominent conversations that we hear in the documentary community, understandably so, about distribution opportunities shrinking,” said Powers. “My takeaway is that the spirit of making documentaries is undiminished. We need more people to step up on the distribution side.”
The 23 doc titles screening in the TIFF doc program join a number of documentaries already announced as part of the gala and platform programs including the world premieres of “John Candy: I Like Me,” “Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery,” “Degrassi: Whatever It Takes,” “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” “You Had to Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution” and “Palimpsest: the Story of a Name.”
The full list of the TIFF Docs lineup follows:
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
