Herzog, Schroeder documentaries on lineup at Toronto film festival
Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World and Barbet Schroeder's Terror's Advocate are among 20 titles announced Tuesday for Real to Reel, the Toronto International Film Festival's documentary lineup.
Encounters, in which Herzog travels to Antarctica accompanied only by his cameraman, is the first documentary by the German filmmaker since Grizzly Man.
In Terror's Advocate, veteran France-based director Schroeder explores the career and conscience of criminal lawyer Jacques Vergès, whose clients include some of the most infamous figures in the 20th century, such as Klaus Barbie, Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.
Films by Kevin Macdonald, director of Last King of Scotland, Australia's Scott Hicks, and Americans Arthur Dong and Nina Davenport are among the 20 documentaries from around the world in the Real to Reel program.
"These films introduce us to unforgettable characters, take us to unimaginable places and force us to confront moral dilemmas that will generate debate and conversation for many months to come," Thom Powers, international documentary programmer said in a news release.
The Canadian documentaries for the festival, which runs Sept.6-15, were previously announced.
The program features three films from the Why Democracy? series, a group of 10 documentaries about the state of democracy commissioned by a South African-based group whose aim is to grow a global conversation about "the biggest political idea of our time."
The films, selected from among 400 submissions, are to begin airing in October on an international broadcaster.
As a preview to those broadcasts, Real to Reel will screen:
- Iron Ladies of Liberia, about a group of women taking leadership roles in the government ofLiberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.
- Dinner with the President, A Nation's Journey,featuring an audience with Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf.
- Please Vote for Me, in which a class of Chinese schoolchildren hold an election to select a class monitor.
Other political films include The Dictator Hunter by the Netherlands' Klaartje Quirijns about efforts to bring Chadian dictator Hissène Habré to justice and Algerie, Histoires a ne pas dire by Jean-Pierre Lledo in which four Algerians revisit their country's war of independence.
Indian-American director Parvez Sharma has taken on the controversial subject of Islam and homosexuality in his documentary A Jihad for Love.
Many of the films profile famous people and personalities.
Australian director Hicks, known for his feature film Shine, documents a year in the life of composer Philip Glass in Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts.
Macdonald istracking Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, in My Enemy's Enemy.
American Peter Askin's documentary is Trumbo, which uses spoken word performances to tell the story of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. It features appearances by Donald Sutherland, Michael Douglas, Joan Allen and Liam Neeson.
Davenport, director of Parallel Lines, follows an Iraqi film student working with actor Liev Schreiber in Operation Filmmaker.
Dong, who explored gay-bashing in Licence to Kill, is bringing Hollywood Chinese, which looks at Chinese in American features, with clips from more than 100 movies dating back to 1916.
TIFF also announced eight new titles for its Vanguard program of experimental films, including Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park and actor Gael Garcia Bernal's directorial debut Deficit.