TorontoFilmFestivalReviews.com: Real to Reel

Real to Reel at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival

In this year’s Real to Reel programme at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), two documentaries of legendary rock stars Kurt Cobain and John Lennon are among 23 features and shorts. AJ Schnack’s Kurt Cobain: About a Son exposes 25 hours of interviews, revealing a first-person account of Cobain’s music career from small-town idler to international rock star. The documentary further discloses Cobain’s suicide in 1994 at the age of 27 as well as his years of stardom as lead singer of Nirvana.

David Leaf and John Scheinfeld’s The U.S. vs. John Lennon exposes the feud between Beatle Lennon and the administration of former U.S. president, Richard Nixon. The documentary features many interviews, boasting an attempt to uncover why Nixon felt so resolute on expelling Lennon out of the U.S.

Another documentary focuses on country superstars, the Dixie Chicks in Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck’s Dixie Chicks—Shut Up and Sing. As the first documentary to gain a gala slot in 14 years, the film journeys to Texas with the Dixie Chicks as they attain world praise until a day in 2003 when lead vocalist, Natalie Maines commented in London, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."

Because Real to Reel showcases films regarding current world and political issues, the subject of terrorism strongly resonates in the programme with Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker’s The Prisoner, or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair. The film exposes the story of a man wrongly accused of terrorism and subsequently sent to the Abu Gharib prison.

Real to Reel also promises some comedy! Jeff Garlin’s This Filthy World Starring John Waters features a one-man show as well as Liz Mermin’s Office Tigers, a real-life comparison to TV’s The Office, showing young East Indian professionals in a U.S. company as they learn and adjust to the Western corporate world.