Ben Proudfoot's Obamas-Backed ‘The Eyes of Ghana' to Open Toronto Fest Doc Program
Nova Scotia-raised and L.A.-based Proudfoot won his two Academy Awards for his short documentary films The Queen of Basketball and The Last Repair Shop that impressed Oscar voters with their cinematic poetry and craft.
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Now it has taken the Obamas' Higher Ground Productions and Oscar-nominated documentary maker Moses Bwayo to convince Proudfoot to bring his emotional and immersive storytelling to the feature documentary with a portrait of Chris Hesse, the personal cinematographer for Kwame Nkrumah who reveals a vast library of lost films about the legendary African leader to modern audiences.
There's no word on whether the Obamas will be in Toronto for the world premiere of The Eyes of Ghana, which also recounts the rise and fall of Nkrumah, who was toppled by a 1966 Ghanaian coup d'état. But alongside Proudfoot, the Obamas have their own Oscar kudos for American Factory, the documentary executive produced by Higher Ground and directed by documentarians Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar as they took home the award for best documentary at the 2020 Academy Awards.
The 2020 TIFF Docs will feature in all 23 documentaries, with 16 being world premieres.
These include John Dower's The Balloonists, about adventurers setting out to circle the globe in a balloon; Tasha Van Zandt's A Life Illuminated, about marine biologist Dr. Edie Widder exploring the ocean depths; Christopher Nelius' Whistle, centering on a competition for champion whistlers; and Nuns vs. the Vatican, from director Lorena Luciano and executive producer Mariska Hargitay, as the film exposes predatory priests abusing nuns inside the Catholic Church.
There's also first looks for director Billy Corben's Canceled: The Paula Deen Story, about the scandal surrounding the celebrity chef using racial slurs in the workplace; and Nicole Baziun's Modern Whore, about the sex industry through the eyes of former sex worker and advocate Andrea Werhun; Free Solo and Nyad filmmakers Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's Love+War, their latest film that follows news the longtime film collaborators have filed for a divorce; and Still Single, from filmmakers Jamal Burger and Jukan Tateisi.
TIFf also booked North American premieres for Raoul Peck's Orwell: 2+2=5, about the life of famed writer George Orwell and which bowed in Cannes; Lucrecia Martel's Nuestra Tierra, about land ownership and indigenous struggles in Latin America and set to bow first in Venice; A Simple Soldier, by Juan Camilo Cruz and Artem Ryzhykov, where Ukrainian filmmaker Ryzhykov gets in front of the camera as a real life soldier fighting Russia on his country's front lines; Sepideh Farsi's Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, where an Iranian filmmaker follows Palestinian photojournalist Fatma Hassona under bombardment in Gaza, only to see her killed by the Israeli Defense Forces just days before the film's debut in Cannes; and The Tale of Silyan, by director Tamara Kotevska and set to bow in Venice.
Other 2025 Doc titles include a Canadian premiere for the Venice-bound Cover-Up, by directors Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus and about the journalism of Seymour Hersh; Michele Stephenson's True North; Sky Hopinka's Powwow People; Zahraa Ghandour's Flana; Darlene Naponse's Aki; Shane Belcourt's Ni-Naadamaadiz: Red Power Rising; Min Sook Lee's There Are No Words, where the award-winning filmmaker explores her mother's fatal suicide 40 years earlier for the National Film Board of Canada; and Peter Mettler's While the Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts, a seven hour film.
The Toronto Film Festival, set to run Sept. 4 to 14, will open with Colin Hanks' John Candy documentary, John Candy: I Like Me. More lineup announcements will be made this week.
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