DARK HORSE
TIFF DOCS D: Louise Osmond. UK. 85 min. Sep 15, 4:30 pm TIFF Bell Lightbox 3 Sep 17, 6:15 pm Bloor Hot Docs. See listings. Rating: NNN
Osmond’s crowd-pleasing documentary – winner of this year’s World Cinema Audience Award at Sundance – recounts the story of Dream Alliance, the racehorse whose triumph at the 2009 Welsh National became a media-friendly Cinderella story. (Owned by a syndicate of friends in the small South Wales town of Blackwood, Dream Alliance won the race after recovering from a potentially career-ending injury.)
Dark Horse ticks all the sports-documentary boxes, bolstering every moment with a manipulative soundtrack and holding on various interview subjects until they start to tear up. It gets the job done, but there’s a sense that Osmond doesn’t trust viewers to appreciate Dream Alliance’s story on their own.
