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TIFF 2020: Festival Re-imagined

(September 8, 2020) At this time of year, the city of Toronto is usually alive with visitors, flocking around theatres for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).  This year, TIFF 2020 opens on September 10 and closes on September 19. Adapting to the changing times, the festival has opted for a creative mixture of cinema, drive-in, and digital screenings.We’ve chosen some films with messages about social justice, cooperation, politics, and protest, to highlight the power of film to inspire and motivate. Whether through documentary or fictional film-making, movies teach us about larger issues that are sometimes difficult to understand. By arranging facts into a narrative centred around one person or one story, we can process what we are learning, remember what we learn, and build empathy and understanding for those different from ourselves. Tickets for online showings and full event listings for TIFF 2020 are available at www.tiff.net.

Our Hearts Beat Like War, 2020. Directed by Elinor Nechemya, this short film illuminates the strange magic that happens when a child’’s imagination “collides with the harsh, grown-up realities he discovers at the refugee-aid centre where his mother works.” (Jason Anderson, photo courtesy of TIFF)
Beans, 2020. Directed by Tracey Deer, Beans tells the story of a talented young girl as she navigates the borders of age, race, and activism. Set during the Mohawk resistance to Canadian police and developers in 1990 (known as the “Oka Crisis”). (Photo courtesy of TIFF) 
Black Bodies, 2020. Kelly Fyffe-Marshall’s short film is a “beautifully poetic and extremely timely account of what it means to be Black in 2020.” (Lisa Haller, photo Courtesy of TIFF)
Get the Hell Out, 2020. From director I-Fan Wang, this gloriously madcap zombie comedy uses martial arts and the setting of the Legislative Yuan (Taiwanese Parliament) for political commentary and a love story. (Photo Courtesy of TIFF)
New Order, Mexico, 2020. Director Michel Franco throws a wedding and an uprising into Mexico City and watches it all burn together. (Photo Courtesy of TIFF)
The Water Walker, Canada/USA,  2020. James Burns documents Anishnaabe water activist Autumn Peltier’s journey from Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory to New York City, to address the United Nations. 4 (Photo courtesy of TIFF)
Trickster, Canada, 2020. Directed by Michelle Latimer, with co-creator Tony Elliot, Trickster brings the Haisla figure of Weej’it into a modern coming-of-age context, with lush imagery and a stylish score. (Photo Courtesy of TIFF)

Feature Photo

The Inheritance, USA, 2020. Ephraim Asili’s first feature film “urgently summons the past in today’s continued fight for racial and social justice through a mix of fact and fiction, portraits and performances.” (Andréa Picard) Informed by Asili’s previous experimental documentary films, The Inheritance has much to offer. (Photo courtesy of TIFF)