TIFF’s Documentary program (TIFF Docs) always features non-fiction storytelling at its finest. Thom Powers has shepherded the program since 2006 and consistently puts out a slate of films that has something for everyone. With TIFF right around the corner, Thom was nice enough to answer a few questions for us about this year’s lineup.
BBP: What’s a good film for viewers who don’t normally watch feature length documentaries?
TP: WHISTLE, It’s about a whistling competition. In the tradition of other great competition documentaries like Spellbound, Air Guitar Nation, or The Speed Cubers it takes us into a world of people who follow something for love more than money. There’s a terrific humor to this film but, make no mistake, the people who are doing this take whistling very seriously. One of the figures in the film, Molly Lewis, has a small degree of recognition on her own. She did whistling in Barbie, performed with Dr. Dre, recorded her own album of whistling, and she’s prominent in the film. One of the appeals of this movie is it’s a contrast to some of the other documentaries that are asking us to engage thoughtfully with the headlines of the day. All of us need an opportunity to decompress from current events and WHISTLE teaches us a technique for that.
BBP: On the other end of the spectrum: what would you recommend to hardcore documentary fans?
TP: COVER-UP, directed by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus. Laurel Poitras is best known for Citizen4, her Oscar-winning film about Edward Snowden, as well as her last film that was at TIFF: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. Her co-director on this film, Mark Obenhaus has a distinguished career working for PBS’s Frontline investigative series. In COVER-UP they are profiling the great American investigative journalist Seymour Hersch who has a storied career of nearly 60 years. He was the journalist who uncovered the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, he was a key investigator into Watergate, he did groundbreaking reporting on programs where the CIA was spying on its own citizens. More recently he broke the story about the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and he continues to be an important journalist today. This is a great opportunity to see two other extremely accomplished journalists, Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus, in dialogue with one of the greats of this field and it’s not always smooth going. When you’re trying to probe the history of someone who’s more accustomed to asking other people questions it gets a little spiky sometimes and, at times, humorous.
BBP: Mainstream audiences are conditioned to seeing documentaries on smaller screens. Are there selections this year that really show off the benefits of experiencing a documentary on a large screen?
TP: I’m going to pick two documentaries about exploration. One is called THE BALLOONISTS that takes us up to the sky. It’s set in the 1990s, when several teams were competing to be the first to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon. This film has extraordinary footage from that era. It’s extremely suspenseful as we see these balloonists face weather conditions, perilous stretches of that flight over the ocean, where, if anything had gone wrong, it would have meant certain death. There’s many twists and turns to that film and visually it is splendid.
The other film about exploration takes us to the depths of the ocean and is called A LIFE ILLUMINATED about marine biologist Dr Edie Widder. She’s made her life’s work exploring the phenomenon of bioluminescence. In the ocean depths, below where the sun reaches, there are creatures who create their own light. This is something that has never really been well documented on film before and in A LIFE ILLUMINATED she is setting out to do that. Both of those are incredible journeys to experience on the big screen.
BBP: Can you tell us a little about the two films that relate to the war in Ukraine?
TP: One is called A SIMPLE SOLDIER and it’s about a Ukrainian cinematographer who was drawn into the military, like most men in the country. I saw a lot of different films about Ukraine this year. Many of them showing important ways of trying to understand what’s going on. But A SIMPLE SOLDIER stood out to me as a film that we will be watching 10 years from now, 20 years from now, into the future because it’s not just about this period. It has broader themes about what it means to live through times where you’re being pulled into current events. That are largely out of your control. It was shot over three years and you really feel the passage of time and that’s always something incredible in a documentary, to see time shaped and distilled that way.
dir. Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin
Another film that deals extensively with Ukraine is LOVE+WAR about Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario. We’re following her over the first two years of the war. She goes in and out of combat zones; always returning to her family, her two children and husband in London, and the film is asking a larger question about how do you do this work? Whether it’s journalism, human rights work, or work that puts your life at risk and takes you into intensely traumatic situations; how do you balance that with having your own family. The filmmakers, Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, known for their Oscar-winning film Free Solo and films like The Rescue and Meru, always bring a high level of storytelling and that’s what viewers can expect.
BBP: Is there anything else you’d like to share about this year’s Documentary program?
TP: I talked before about WHISTLE being a way to escape from current events. But a strength of this program are films that illuminate what is going on in the world today with greater nuance and empathy than we get from our social media scrolls or other intakes of news. I think of the film PUT YOUR SOUL ON YOUR HAND AND WALK, which previously played the Cannes Film Festival in their ACID (Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema) section and is now making its North American Premier at TIFF. It is a film about a young photojournalist in her 20s in Gaza as she builds a friendship over the phone with the filmmaker, Sepideh Farsi, who comes from a generation above her. The opportunity to get to know Fatma Hasana, this photographer who has since been killed, and to see joy that she tried to infuse in her short life is extraordinary.
dir. Lorena Luciano
Another film that helps us understand issues of the day is called NUNS VS. THE VATICAN. This one has the support of executive producer Mariska Hargitay, best known for her role on Law and Order. This is a film about an ongoing case where multiple nuns have made serious allegations about abuse inside the church and for a long time there’s been a structural willfulness to not listen to their cases. In this film we’re going to be able to give them a voice and a platform that they haven’t had before.
Find information about the Festival, including schedule and ticket information at TIFF.net ! The Festival runs from September 4-14, 2025 and you can find coverage right here at Biff Bam Pop!
