QUESTION: What are your essential criteria for selecting documentaries for the festival, and what distinguishes this year‘s selections from those of years past?
POWERS: I’d say the key word in describing what we look for when we’re programming the films is ‘balance.’ We try to balance high profile personalities like Valentino Garavani (Valentino: The Last Emperor) and Paris Hilton (Paris, Not France) with highly controversial social issues about vital things that deeply influence our lives with films such as Food, Inc. and At the Edge of the World.
The idea of balance also applies to the selection of directors. We try to balance veteran documentary directors like Davis Guggenheim, who made the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth and now has It Might Get Loud with emerging directors like Chai Vasarhelyi, who’s presenting her second film, Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love.
Then, we also are careful to represent a global range of films, so the festival roster is like a ticket around the world that introduces you to what most concerns people in different regions and takes you from the borders of Nepal, where you see the search for the reincarnation of a Tibetan lama in Unmistaken Child, to the Antarctic seas, where you see the struggle to prevent illegal killing of whales, to the hinterlands of Colombia, where journalists are in peril, in Unwanted Witness and all around the world with war photographer Robert King in Blood Trail.
I should mention, too, that every year, we seem to have a documentaries theme emerge, meaning that we present subject clusters of nonfiction films. Last year there were multiple films about the Iraq War, and this year it seems to be about environmental issues--with films like Upstream Battle, At The Edge Of The World and others.
And, this year, there’s also a sports theme, with a cluster of sports documentaries such as More Than A Game, about NBA star LeBron James and his high school career, and Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, which Emerging Pictures will open in New York in November and then roll out across the nation.
QUESTION: Which other films from Toronto International Film Festival's 2008 documentaries roster will soon make their way into theaters, so that wider audiences can see them?
POWERS: There are several that are already slated for release. Religulous with Bill Maher and directed by Larry Charles, who directed Borat, will open in October, and it’s an equal opportunity offender.
It Might Get Loud is sure to open shortly because of Davis Guggenheim and the Inconvenient Truth team behind it. Food Inc. is set for a wide release, and it will do for supermarkets what Jaws did for the ocean--you’ll never see them the same way again.
