The women of the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival

This year’s line-up includes newcomers, emerging talents, and plenty of grandmothers

By Sophie Mayer
Published: October 10th, 2008 | 4:30pm

Léa Pool has been making films for 25 years, including the gorgeous teen drama that launched Mischa Barton’s career, Lost and Delirious. She’s at Toronto with her new film, Maman est Chez le Coiffeur (óat the Hairdresser), a bittersweet coming-of-age story about an ambitious journalist and her three children. Set in 1966, it showcases not just awesome fashion, but also an atmosphere of repression of the verge of explosion. It’s a moment that Pool talks about with passion, having been involved in feminist politics and film festivals in the 60s and 70s. Casting her eye over the Toronto International Film Festival program, she sighs, “At big film festivals, it’s about 10% films by women at the top level.”

Along with films by first-time women directors Nandita Das (Firaaq) and Valdis Óskarsdóttir (the ebullient Country Wedding), TIFF 08 had films from emerging talents Malgoska Szumowska (surefire arthouse hit 33 Scenes from Life), Chus Gutiérrez (Return to Hansala) and Kelly Reichardt, who started out as Hal Hartley’s costume designer and now makes the slow, sad-sweet localist films that Hartley seems to have forgotten how to make. US women directors were thin on the ground — although Jennifer Reeves’ four-years-in-the-making dreamy meditation on memory and the natural world, When It Was Blue, not only had live music from a very jet-lagged Skúli Sverrisson, but also drew a massive round of applause and great Q&A.

So it was heartening that the festival also celebrated the long careers of Kathryn Bigelow (whose new film The Hurt Locker follows Jeremy Renner into the Iraq war and its fracturing of masculinity) and queen of French cinema Agnès Varda, whose magnificent autobiographical documentary Le Plages d’Agnès charts her life in beaches, from her childhood in France during WWII, to Los Angeles with husband Jacques Demy and their friendship with Jim Morrison, to her 80th birthday (and a beach outside her Paris office) earlier this year. Claire Denis also returned to form with the melancholy charm of 35 Rhums set in the African community in Paris, and the only film at the festival in which a rice cooker plays a crucial role.

“But,” continues Pool, “in small countries where it is difficult for anyone to make films, there are women directors. That’s great!” Kazakh director Guka Omarova would agree. She got her break working on Sergei Bodrov’s epic Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (as second unit director she was responsible for the horseback battle sequences involving hundreds of extras and burning arrows — take that, Kathryn Bigelow!), and Bodrov shared screenwriting duties on Omarova’s second film Baksy (Native Dancer). It’s a more intimate but equally powerful film where shamanic sheep sacrifices and smoky pool bars reveal the changing nature of Kazakh life. At the heart of the film is a finely-acted relationship between the shaman Aidai (Neisipkul Omarbekova) and the young boy who was conceived with her help. His kidnap sets in motion the Eastern Promises narrative that makes the film so thrilling — but their relationship, and the earthy spiritual world it reveals, makes the film more than a thriller.

Great roles for older women featured big: Marion Bethel as the protagonist’s grandmother cast her shadow over Bahamian drama Rain, despite dying in the first ten minutes (and CCH Pounder, or Detective Claudette Wyms from The Shield, gives a lovely performance as Rain’s athletics coach Ms. Adams). Director Maria Govan, a Greek-Bahamian who has previously made several documentaries on her home island, told me that the script originally called for scenes in which Rain (pitch-perfect first-timer Renel Brown) sees her grandmother’s spirit — although they were cut, there’s a haunting quality to the familiar story of a young person who finds strength in athletic ability (with its gender twist). It’s a film shimmering — especially in the cinematography of Martina Radwan — with promise. Govan has ideas for future features set in the Bahamas, including a film with a genderqueer protagonist.

But the Top Granny award goes, without question, to Before Tomorrow’s Ninioq, played by Madeline Piujuq Ivalu, who also co-adapted and directed the film. She’s one member of the Arnait Video Collective, who have been making documentaries together about women’s lives and stories in Inuit communities for 18 years. Ninioq takes her grandson Maniq (Paul-Dylan Ivalu, stealing Cutest Boy Actor of the festival from Maman’s Hugo St-Onge-Paquin and Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel) to an island away from the community’s settlement to dry that year’s fish. When her son Apak (Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq, who played Oki in Atanarjuat) doesn’t return to collect them as the snow comes, Ninioq has to make an impossible decision in the darkness of winter.

Before Tomorrow impressed the judges of the CityTV to obtain the award for Best Canadian First Feature Film, so the Collective have $15,000 (CAD) towards travel to Mexico and Peru for their next film, which co-director Marie-Hélène Cousineau described to me as a transamerican documentary about indigenous women affected by strip-mining and resource appropriation. Runner-up for the award was Lyne Charlebois’ psychological tour-de-force Borderline, starring Isabelle Blais as a woman at war with herself. Seems like Canada is one of those small countries and TIFF will hopefully carry on celebrating women directors throughout their careers.