14 | Sight&Sound | November 2019
By Tom Charity
In times like these, arts institutions show their
true colours whether they like it or not. While
Venice managed to find just two films made
by women worthy of inclusion among 21
competition slots, Toronto saw 36 per cent of the
328 features and shorts directed or co-directed
by women (from 32 per cent of submissions),
including 50 per cent of Gala presentations
and 51 per cent of the Discovery section. In
addition, 120 female filmmakers were invited
to attend the festival’s Industry Conference
for free, with gender parity in the selection of
conference speakers. Oh, and the revamped
programming team under Cameron Bailey
and Joana Vicente is also gender balanced.
The fruits of this proactive approach were
immediately apparent on screen, in fresh,
lively and inspiring movies such as Coky
Giedroyc’s How to Build a Girl (based on Caitlin
Moran’s semi-autobiographical novel, with
Beanie Feldstein confidently mimicking a
Wolverhampton accent: “Always remember,
any time someone escapes from a council
estate it’s a miracle”); Sarah Gavron’s Loachian,
sympathetic Rocks, which chronicles the
hardships endured by a resilient East London
teenager doing her best to look after herself and
her younger brother after their mum has taken
off; and Gitanjali Rao’s beautiful, evocative
and inventive animated feature Bombay
Rose, which deserves to travel far and wide.
The festival also made space for Mark Cousins’s
14-hour documentary series Women Make Film:
A New Road Movie Through Cinema, an eye-
opening alternative take on cinema studies, with
commentary from the likes of Thandie Newton,
Jane Fonda, Kerry Fox and Debra Winger. That
Cousins’s series has sold widely, including to
North America, speaks volumes about what
promises to be a paradigm shift in cinema’s point
of view. (Even Hollywood seems to be getting it,
evidenced convincingly here by Lorene Scafaria’s
hit Hustlers, and high-profile Oscar hopefuls
such as Kasi Lemmons’s Harriet and Marielle
Heller’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood.)
Of course, Toronto still rolls out the red
carpet for any studio movie with an autumn
release date and a reputable movie star willing
to tread it – and why wouldn’t it, when the
locals greet them with unalloyed adulation and
rapturous ovations? Something for everyone is
still the mantra here, for better and worse – did
I mention 328 films in 11 days? The festival’s
longstanding deference to Corporate Cinema
keeps the hoopla machine greased but has the
unwanted side effect of diverting attention
from the many, often better, films without big
names or promotional budgets, including what
many observers will tell you – and I am one
of them – is the most exciting line-up of new
Canadian movies in many a year (nearly half of
them directed by women). Northern titles worth
looking out for: Anne at 30,000 Ft, a portrait
of a woman in crisis, with rising star Deragh
Campbell; the Guy Maddin-esque The Twentieth
Century; indigenous zombie movie Blood
Quantum; and Zacharias Kunuk’s momentous
Inuk historical drama One Day in the Life of
Noah Piugattuk. Too bad most of these films
will go unremarked both at home and abroad.
Talking of bandwidth, Netflix eats up 15 per
cent of the entire internet worldwide , according
to the New York Times. If Cannes is a holdout, so
too is Cineplex, Canada’s dominant exhibition
chain, which refused to allow the festival to
screen its half-dozen or so Netflix titles, even to
press and industry visitors. This proved a mere
minor irritation for the festival, which simply
showed Noah Baumbach’s scintillating divorce
comedy Marriage Story, Steven Soderbergh’s
sketchy Panama Papers riff The Laundromat
and Fernando Meirelles’s shrewd speculative
rumination on the relationship between Popes
Benedict and Francis The Two Popes, on its
own impressive Bell Lightbox screens instead.
“How did you recreate the Sistine Chapel?”
an audience member wanted to know after The
Two Popes screening. “In fact, it was easy,” star
Jonathan Pryce replied. “Netflix has all the money
in the world, so we just built our own.” He wasn’t
entirely joking. Apparently its version was a few
inches larger than the original, so Netflix can
boast the biggest Sistine Chapel anywhere.
Still, some smaller titles always break out.
This year, the Romanian documentary Collective
was one of them, earning a rave review from
Variety in Venice before wowing critics and
exhibitors, and hopefully distributors, here. This
sobering film about the aftermath of a disastrous
nightclub fire – the survivors’ ordeal only got
worse when they were admitted to Bucharest
hospitals – will resonate hard with anyone who
is paying attention to how democracy itself is
on life support these days. Another title shared
with Venice, Martin Eden, was equally well
received here and picked up the prestigious
Platform prize, while the People’s Choice
Award, to this observer’s bewilderment, went
to Taika Waititi’s unfunny and ersatz anti-Hate
satire, Jojo Rabbit, about which the best that
can be said is that at least it wasn’t Joker.
Hustlers is reviewed on page 68 and
The Laundromat on page 73
TORONTO
The festival’s concerted efforts to
tackle gender imbalances paid
dividends with a lively and
inspiring – if colossal – selection
Something for everyone is still
the mantra here, for better and
worse – did I mention there
were 328 films in 11 days?
School of hard knocks: Sarah Gavron’s Rocks follows a teen left reeling when her mother abandons her
FESTIVALS
TOM CHARITY’S TOP FIVE
1 Waves A young wrestler’s seemingly perfect
life starts to spin out of control (below).
2 The Painted Bird Václav Marhoul’s brutal
tale about a young Jewish boy in WWII.
3 Collective A nightclub fire provides
the focus for a searing documentary
portrait of Romanian corruption.
4 Uncut Gems The Safdie brothers’ drama
about a diamond dealer drowning in debt.
5 Weathering with You Anime from Japanese
box-office gold mine Shinkai Makoto.
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Festival: Toronto, 1
