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10 intriguing documentaries playing at TIFF 2021

Kenny G in a still from Listening To Kenny G

TIFF is typically the place to catch major documentaries by the biggest directors working in the form today. This year’s buzziest selections include titles backed by Amazon and Showtime, intimate coming-of-age portraits and “definitive” profiles about Dionne Warwick, Julia Child, Jacques Cousteau and Oscar Peterson, as well as The Rescue, the latest high-octane movie from the Oscar-winning team behind Free Solo. We’re actually really excited for the Kenny G movie, which is among a handful of documentaries screening at TIFF 2021 that are departing from the treatment you might expect. Here are 10 documentaries to add to your schedule.

Listening To Kenny G

Hail Satan? and Nuts! director Penny Lane is hardly a stranger to culture wars, so it’s no surprise she’s behind this documentary exploration of why smooth jazz superstar Kenny G is as loathed as much as he is loved. Part of the HBO doc strand Music Box that also gave us Woodstock 99 and Jagged (see below), Listening To Kenny G promises to take a critical look at the rise and enduring popularity of the polarizing Seattle saxophonist, who has sold 75 million albums globally and recently collaborated with Kanye West and The Weeknd.

Flee TIFF
Courtesy of TIFF

Flee

One of the year’s buzziest documentaries finally arrives in Toronto. Danish filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s animated movie is about a man (his true identity is being kept secret) who fled Afghanistan as a child refugee in the 80s and came out as gay as a teen in Europe. The film picked up the Grand Jury Prize for world cinema documentary the year’s Sundance Film Festival where it premiered to rave reviews.

Three Minutes – A Lengthening
Courtesy of TIFF

Three Minutes – A Lengthening

Bianca Stigter’s documentary uses just over three minutes of home-movie footage shot in August 1938 to obsessively investigate the lives and stories of people living in a Jewish community in Poland before it was decimated by the Nazis. Produced by Steve McQueen and narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, the movie goes frame-by-frame to examine the relationship between history and memory. It’s inspired by Glenn Kurtz’s book, Three Minutes In Poland: Discovering A Lost World In A 1938 Family Film.

A Night Of Knowing Nothing
Courtesy of TIFF

A Night Of Not Knowing

After picking up the Golden Eye award for best documentary film at the Cannes Film Festival, Mumbai-based director Payal Kapadia’s debut feature screens in TIFF’s Wavelengths program, which emphasizes formally adventurous filmmakers. Mixing documentary and fiction, this essayistic and dream-like film uses a personal exploration of love and politics to capture the realities faced by those in India with dissenting views. The Cannes win has turned Kapadia into an emerging director to watch.

Alanis Morissette
Courtesy of TIFF

Jagged

Alison Klayman has made films about right-wing political operative Steve Bannon and Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. Now, she turns a lens on the Ottawa-raised rocker who seemingly blew up overnight in the mid-1990s. Alanis Morissette became a mega-star on her own terms, and she is often candid, self-deprecating and self-reflective in interviews. This film focuses specifically on her once-ubiquitous Jagged Little Pill album, which she is currently celebrating with a 25th anniversary tour, and explores the wider pop culture context in the 90s that gave rise to her success.

A kangaroo in Burning
Courtesy of TIFF

Burning

Generating Academy Awards buzz is a big part of TIFF, and there are several films screening in the TIFF Docs program that will likely become the subject of awards-season campaigns. Chief among them is Oscar winner Eva Orner’s Amazon Studios-backed Burning, about the Australian bush fires that destroyed 59 million acres and darkened the skies over Sydney in 2019-2020. Executive produced by Cate Blanchett, the movie recounts the devastation from the point of view of fire victims, activists and scientists.

The Devil's Drivers
Courtesy of TIFF

The Devil’s Drivers

While there are plenty of movies directed by doc-world heavyweights playing at TIFF this year, a non-fiction movie with potential sleeper status is Mohammed Abugeth and Daniel Carsenty’s The Devil’s Drivers. Shot over eight years, the film follows Palestinian smugglers who help workers cross the border into Israel. TIFF’s programmers say it is shot with “the intensity of a 1970s chase film,” while also giving viewers an insider look at Israeli military tactics in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Hold Your FIre still
Courtesy of TIFF

Hold Your Fire

Two docs playing at TIFF, Stanley Nelson’s much-anticipated Attica and Hold Your Fire, are revisiting what you might call the Dog Day Afternoon-era of the 1970s. Produced by Fred Brathwaite (aka hip-hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy), Stefan Forbes’s doc uses a Rashomon-like structure to show how four young Black Muslims robbing a Brooklyn sporting goods store sparked a massive police and media response that attracted huge crowds. The movie explores how the case became a turning point for police de-escalation tactics.

Courtesy of TIFF

Beba

First-time feature director Rebecca “Beba” Huntt’s documentary memoir debuts at TIFF after raising $40,000 on Kickstarter and earning some buzzy pre-release coverage in big American magazines. Amid a lineup stacked with documentary portraits, this film stands out as more intimate and low-key entry. Shot on 16mm, Beba traces Huntt’s life, from growing up as the daughter of working-class Dominican and Venezuelan parents in New York City, to her admission to Bard College where she navigates social circles divided by race and class.

Futura
Courtesy of TIFF

Futura

Are the kids alright? Three Italian filmmakers who are well-known on the international festival circuit team up for this contemporary portrait of Italian youth that’s inspired by Pasolini’s Love Encounters. Pietro Marcello (who won the TIFF Platform Prize two years ago for Martin Eden), Francesco Munzi and Alice Rohrwacher’s journey across Italy might satisfy audiences looking for something that offers the pure joys of cinematic travelogue while also probing deeper issues and truths facing youth today.

Read more

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@KevinRitchie

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