Unanimously praised by the critics and recipient of the Oscar for "Best Documentary", Searching for Sugar Man (by Malik Bendjelloul) is the absolute must-see of this edition. The film tells the touching story of musician Sixto Rodriguez who, without even knowing it, inspired a whole generation.
An amazing story has to tell Dreams of a Life (by Carol Morley), the reconstruction of the life of a young woman who died without anyone noticing it: alone on the couch, surrounded by unopened Christmas presents and with her TV turned on. Her body was discovered three years later. And Fuck for Forest (by Michal Marczak) takes us in the notorious world of the first eco-porno ONG, an institution that raises money for the tropical forest by selling pornography.
TIFF audiences will enjoy complex portraits such as A World Not Ours (by Mahdi Fleifel), the personal journal of the director about the Palestinian refugee camp Ain el-Helweh from Liban, where he was brought up, the multi-awarded Hit So Hard (by P. David Ebersole), a rockumentary about the thrilling life of Patty Schemel, the drummer of Hole, Courtney Love's band, Liv & Ingmar (by Dheeraj Akolkar), telling the love and friendship story of director Ingmar Bergman and actress Liv Ullman or Pablo (by Richard Goldgewicht), a film as ingenious as its protagonist, the "famed nobody" Pablo Ferro, the eccentric artist called by Stanley Kubrick "the father of the 60s style and of the MTV esthetics".
Tzvetanka (by Youlian Tabakov) – which was also screened at New York's MoMA – is the fascinating portrait of the director's grandmother who witnessed three different eras in Bulgaria's recent history: monarchy, communism and democracy; In the Dark Room (by Nadav Schirman), which was selected in numberless festivals, makes the portrait of Magdalena Kopp, the wife of the most wanted terrorist of the 70s, Carlos the Jackal; Grandpa's Watch (by Alex Levy Heller) takes the director back to Transilvania, in search of a watch hidden by his grandfather before being sent to Auschwitz; Nadea e Sveta (by Maura Delpero) focuses on two Bessarabian girls working in Italy.
Stylish, inventive and amusing, L’amour des moules/ Mussels in Love (by Willemiek Kluijfhout) sees the world through the eyes of the mussels who, like those eating them, make love, multiply, are stressed and travel. Naked Opera (by Angela Christlieb), is a mix of fiction and documentary focusing on a lethal disease-stricken manager who opts for an opulent and decadent lifestyle. Man at War (by Jacek Blawut) explores some men's obsession with a video game, while Swandown (by Andrew Kotting) is a self-deprecating and poetic travelogue following Kotting and writer Iain Sinclair while taking a swan boat across the lake.
