The documentary awards race always begins at Sundance, where “Flee” (Neon) and “Summer of Soul” (Searchlight) broke out as Oscar frontrunners; Tribeca debuted high-profile “The Lost Leonardo” (Sony Pictures Classics) and “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain” (Focus), while Todd Haynes’ “Velvet Underground” (AppleTV+) and “Val” (A24/Amazon) played well at Cannes.Every September, the Toronto International Film Festival documentary lineup introduces more top non-fiction titles to the list of Oscar contenders — and this year, without many clear frontrunners, TIFF’s influence will be greater than ever.
In the good old days when the TIFF selection was a sprawling smorgasbord, Thom Powers lead the TIFF documentary programmers through an enormous number of submissions to cull 22 selections.
In the slimmed-down pandemic era, his team had to winnow TIFF Docs down to 13 features (announced so far)..“Every year it’s a painful part of the process,” Powers told IndieWire, who is able
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