An interview with Universal Language director Matthew Rankin about emerging from the cinematic gutters of Winnipeg to make an Oscar contender.
Here’s What Our Members Are Saying About the TIFF Docs
September 17, 2020

As always, there are some hot docs at the Toronto International Film Festival. The TIFF Docs programme is one of the event’s most reliable guides. This year’s slimmed-down festival is no exception. The past few days debuted a slew of docs on the press and industry side of the event after the star-studded early days of TIFF 2020. TIFF docs like Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer’s meteoric Fireball had our critics looking to the stars. The profile of activist Greta Thunberg, I Am Greta, mostly inspired our members while appearing in the festival’s Special Events section. Sam Pollard’s timely Martin Luther King, Jr. portrait MLK/FBI proved one of the festival’s consensus favourites.
Few members, however, braved the four-and-a-half-hour marathon of Fred Wiseman’s City Hall, which put audiences inside Boston’s municipal services for as much time as it takes to get a driver’s license renewed at Service Ontario. Finally, the coronavirus doc 76 Days proved an unexpected hit at the festival. Few audiences might have the stomach to see a COVID-19 doc, but our members generally praised it as an immediate portrait from the front lines of Wuhan.
Here is what our members are saying about some of the TIFF Docs:
On the new ’zog Fireball:
Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds @TIFF_NET — surprisingly moving. Scientists from all over the world, in love with the human thirst for knowledge. Plus #WernerHerzog gets to talk about empty vastness and the potential end of life in Earth.
— Johanna Schneller (@JoSchneller) September 16, 2020
FIREBALL – Herzog/Oppenheimer take another journey together, this time looking at extraterrestrial rocks that can change history in shattering ways. It's a comfortable if predictable shtick, making for an entertaining as well as educational tale about our shared planet #tiff20
— Jason Gorber (@filmfest_ca) September 15, 2020
https://twitter.com/normwilner/status/1306103150827499520
https://twitter.com/cinemablogrpher/status/1306560717139607556
FIREBALL: VISITORS FROM DARKER WORLDS: Come for Werner Herzog's journey into the world of meteors but stay for the opportunity to hear him utter the words, "a beach resort so godforsaken you want to cry." Half-amusing, half-enlightening … a movie of halves. #TIFF20
— Barry Hertz (@HertzBarry) September 11, 2020
Inspired by I Am Greta:
Half an hour into watching "I Am Greta" and I am already moved to tears. #TIFF20 @GretaThunberg @IAmGretaFilm
— k🇺🇦🇺🇦🇨🇦 (@kargor) September 15, 2020
Just watched 'I am Greta' at #TIFF20. Deeply moving Director Nathan Grossman lets Greta, the human, the activist, and the generosity and determination she inspires, shine. Will be released in Canada in October. A great doc on one of the essential issues of our time. #IAmGreta https://t.co/aO8LVLT0Wx
— k🇺🇦🇺🇦🇨🇦 (@kargor) September 15, 2020
I AM GRETA: Inspiration in pigtails. Teen climate activist is super determined in her quest to stop global warming, but she's not superhuman, as docmaker Nathan Grossman plainly shows. Greta Thunberg fights burnout and loneliness, but she fights on — truly remarkable. #TIFF20 pic.twitter.com/wAKQVDqJTg
— Peter Howell 🖊 (@peterhowellfilm) September 16, 2020
I AM GRETA: An unintentionally great lesson on how to turn a fascinating subject into a cipher, and urgent subject matter into a trivial distraction. #TIFF20
— Barry Hertz (@HertzBarry) September 16, 2020
https://twitter.com/cinemablogrpher/status/1306417526247747584
Only one TFCA member saw the Wiseman and lived to tell about it:
CITY HALL – Wiseman's epic, at times indulgent look at community, conversations, campaigns and challenges that give a rich yet frustrating look at his hometown. His technique both illuminates and obfuscates, the very tool of direct cinema hampering contradictory voices. #tiff20
— Jason Gorber (@filmfest_ca) September 15, 2020
There is lots of inspiring rhetoric, fine prepared speeches, some clear good intentions on display. But we're hidden form the turmoil, the backstabbing, the full-contact nature of politics both as theatre and practice. THE WIRE feels more truthly, more documentary, than this
— Jason Gorber (@filmfest_ca) September 15, 2020
But in the end, CITY HALL's vastness and reticence to overtly editorialize can serve as a kind of neutral, somewhat neutered snapshot of Boston in 2019, a pre-COVID world where worries and complaints seem almost quaint given today's circumstances. #tiff12
— Jason Gorber (@filmfest_ca) September 15, 2020
Kudos for MLK/FBI:
MLK/FBI: The FBI and its driven boss J. Edgar Hoover spied on civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., for alleged communist ties and extramarital affairs. The vendetta is brought home in Sam Pollard's masterful doc, which reminds us how little things have changed. #TIFF20 pic.twitter.com/bhBGG7ngbr
— Peter Howell 🖊 (@peterhowellfilm) September 15, 2020
TIFF Day 6. #MLKFBI is a needed reminder that J. Edgar Hoover was relentless and evil. The powerful Mexican social drama #NewOrder just won the Silver Lion at Venice. Also thumbs up for @NORTHERNGRRL's supernatural-themed mini-series Trickster.https://t.co/TEy8sGK9RL
— Jim Slotek (@jimslotek) September 15, 2020
https://twitter.com/normwilner/status/1305685296084856833
May be overlooked, but March on Washington footage (clearly recently restored) looks =phenomenal= as used in MLK/FBI. It's clear that they've managed to rescue OCN (or done a heap of digital work), but it makes King's speech to Mall feel like it was captured yesterday
— Jason Gorber (@filmfest_ca) September 13, 2020
MLK/FBI s a strong, quietly artful film that deserves respect, writes @GlassmanMarc https://t.co/8NwZhcpmt4 #TIFF20 pic.twitter.com/wKkk9dskJt
— POV Magazine (@POVmagazine) September 16, 2020
Coughing up praise for 76 Days:
Forget Midnight Madness, the biggest horror film of #tiff20 is 76 DAYS. Unflinching, this deeply unsettling yet profoundly human look at life in Wuhan during emergence of 2020's plague. Astonishing access provides a deep look into the darkness that changed everything.
— Jason Gorber (@filmfest_ca) September 13, 2020
76 Days – well observed fly on the wall doc of beleaguered hospital staff and patients battling COVID-19 during Wuhan lockdown.
Anyone thinking of letting down their guard for a potential 2nd wave should ruminate on the buzzing plastic bin marked “phones of the dead” #TIFF20 pic.twitter.com/sSMKOvvoVR— Eli Glasner 🎥 (@glasneronfilm) September 15, 2020
76 DAYS: This look at Wuhan in the early days of COVID-19 is occasionally engrossing. But its construction lacks urgency, and the characters the filmmakers keep returning to never stick. Watching this in a movie theatre, though, does make for a compelling TIFF challenge. #TIFF20
— Barry Hertz (@HertzBarry) September 14, 2020
https://twitter.com/cinemablogrpher/status/1304036311540674566
76 DAYS: Directors Hao Wu, Weixi Chen and “Anonymous” went straight to the source of COVID-19. Filming furtively and shooting from the hip in Wuhan, China, ground zero for the bug, they reveal near-panic attempts to wrestle a viral tiger — but also courage and humanity. #TIFF20 pic.twitter.com/edJsyEcL6U
— Peter Howell 🖊 (@peterhowellfilm) September 14, 2020
Indulging in The Truffle Hunters:
https://twitter.com/cinemablogrpher/status/1306043213443194881
THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS is delicious, the sweet smell of success wafting over its brisk running time, with soothing vignettes, dogcam POV, smashed typewriters and super tubers. Expect audiences to eat this one up.#Sundance
— Jason Gorber (@filmfest_ca) January 28, 2020
THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS: Come to watch others eat the shavings of a food you'll never be able to afford, stay for the dogs. So many dogs (alt title: GUILE OF DOGS). Breezy and melancholy, it's a fine enough snack of a movie, but you'll leave hungry for something more. #TIFF20
— Barry Hertz (@HertzBarry) September 15, 2020
TIFF runs through Sept. 19. Stay tuned for more reactions and coverage from TFCA members!