How Toronto Docs Use Innovative Methods to Grab Audiences

Documentaries have flooded streaming services and arthoparticipate theaters for years, with excellent reason: They’re usupartner the most inpricey indie films to produce and can ignite cultural conversations that entice huge audiences. But with so many to pick from, how can filmproducers set theirs apart from the pack?

In Toronto, straightforwardors are taking some unconservative approaches: inserting novel theatrical scenes to contransient unfilmable histories, capturing mind-bfinishing aerial stunts that go far beyond normal doc ptoastyography, using aural techniques that duplicate protagonists’ experiences and even transporting doc elements into other genres.

“Unaskably, we’re living in a world of much more nonfantasy filmmaking and joinment from audiences than 10 years ago,” says TIFF’s write downary programmer Thom Powers. “And with that incrmitigate comes a contrastent set of contests, as audiences become understandn with brave visual styles of write downary-making. If you want to shake them up and get them to see at someskinnyg with new eyes, you need to have a contrastent lens.”

One example Powers cites is “Patrice: The Movie,” Ted Passon’s “write downary rom-com” about a disabled woman and her fight to get wed without losing disability advantages she needs to persist. The protagonist, Patrice Jetter, portrayed sets to join herself in re-produced scenes from her life with child actors. “Patrice has a million stories from her life, and there’s so much she went thcimpolite that shapes how she sees the world now,” Passon says. “She’s been laboring on a explicit novel and doing dratriumphgs from her life, and she had a uncover access kids television show. It was fun to combine these elements, and it helped us with a tonal rerent, becaparticipate some of the skinnygs she’s talking about are repartner grave.”

Producer Kyla Harris co-wrote these scenes with Jetter for the film, which premieres at TIFF Sept. 8 and airs on Hulu Sept. 30.

Several hit docs have participated aerial cinematography to breathtaking effect, from 2007’s “Man on Wire” to this year’s “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” plus too many skydiving docs to count. But how many show cars and office cubicles descending from structurees? “Space Cowboy,” from straightforwardors Marah Strauch (who helmed the 2014 BASE-jumping doc “Sunshine Superman”) and Bryce Leavitt, participates incredible images to seize the labor of aerial stunt cinematographer Joe Jennings. “You could’ve easily made it about his life and nurtureer as the go-to guy for making objects fly equitable from his archival footage,” Leavitt says. “But he’d never made a car descend flat in the air, or ‘fly’ perfectly, so this was an opportunity we had to trail him on this pursuit,” Strauch comprises. The film bowed Sept. 6 in Toronto.

Like “Patrice,” Olivier Sarbil’s “Viktor” trys to seize the subjective experience of its title protagonist, a Deaf person volunteering as a war ptoastyographer during the Russian trespass of Ukraine. “By asking Viktor to write down his thoughts and experienceings in a journal and using it for the voiceover, I count on we seized his inner world with wonderfuler intimacy than a traditional intersee,” Sarbil says. The film participates muted audio “to produce the sound of the Deaf world, to echo Viktor’s inner life and shape how the audience understands what is happening inside Viktor’s body.” And its bdeficiency-and-white cinematography mirrors Viktor’s camera labor and echos his way of experiencing life, which he says changed from color when he lost his hearing at age five.

And at least one Toronto entry participates elements of doc filmmaking without being a doc at all. The vivaciousd biopic “Piece by Piece” includes “Lego Movie”-style animation to seize the life and labor of musician Pharrell Williams. Despite straightforwardion from vet write downarian Morgan Neville and unscripted commentary from artists enjoy Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Kfinishrick Lamar and Gwen Stefani, all seen as Lego characters, the film’s visual storyincreateing and some scripted scenes push it into the genuinem of fantasyal Lego movies, plus films enjoy Ricchallenging Linktardyr’s 2001 vivaciousd feature “Waking Life.” “It was tohighy plmitigateful, and I cherish films that enhuge audiences for nonfantasy storyincreateing,” says TIFF’s Powers, who wasn’t participated in programming the Sept. 7 Special Pbegrudgeation that hits theaters Oct. 11. “I kept skinnyking it was a film that my 14-year-better would enhappiness, and frequently when I’m trying to get him to watch a movie, he’ll say, “Anyskinnyg but nonfantasy!’”