A film festival turns a well-timed spotlight on black voices in cinema

If ever there was a year for black voices in cinema to be heard loud and clear, it is 2020. This is the year the Black Lives Matter movement has gathered momentum in the United States following a series of incidents where African Americans have been the victims of police brutality. Protests, demonstrations — and sometimes, violent rioting and looting — have dominated headlines even through the Covid-19 pandemic.

As North America’s biggest film festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, or TIFF, was in the right place at the right time to shine a spotlight on the community. As Cameron Bailey, artistic director and co-head of TIFF, said, “I think black filmmakers know they have a great audience and a great reception for their films here, and so we’re often fortunate enough to see those films first. And this year, there was another great crop of films. Many of them actually do speak to what’s going on right now in terms of protest, not just in the US but in Canada and beyond as well.”

TIFF staged a truncated event this year, but still managed to showcase black artistes from various countries in many roles as actors, directors and producers. Oscar-winning actors Halle Berry and Regina King both made their directorial debuts with Bruised and One Night in Miami, respectively. David Oyelowo, who was seen in Selma and Queen of Katwe, was another black actor to premier his first directorial venture, The Water Man. The festival opener was Oscar-winning filmmaker Spike Lee’s documentary, David Byrne’s American Utopia.

Documentaries like MLK/FBI and 40 Years a Prisoner revisited controversial episodes in American law enforcement’s treatment of black activists decades ago.

Some of these films had to scramble to be ready for TIFF amidst lockdowns. Bruised, which also stars Berry as a troubled mixed martial arts fighter, was screened as a “work in progress”. One Night in Miami, adapted from a play by Kemp Powers, provided a fictionalised account of a real meeting of four iconic black figures in February 1964 — the activist, Malcolm X; boxing champion Cassius Clay before he became Muhammad Ali; pop star Sam Cooke; and the football star-turned-actor Jim Brown — as they debate how to use their celebrity to advocate for their community’s civil rights.

King struggled to finish the film, but was determined to show it in Toronto. Speaking at TIFF, she said, “The things that are being discussed in the film are just as relevant now as they were 60 years ago.” Referring to the black victims of some incidents that sparked widespread protests this year, she added, “All of our projects had been cancelled due to Covid. I luckily was able to keep editing while we were waiting to see what the climate of the world was gonna be. And then George Floyd happened (Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, was killed on May 25 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, while being arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit bill); Breonna Taylor happened (Taylor, 26, a medical worker in Kentucky, was shot and killed by police officers in March); first Ahmaud Arbery happened (Arbery, 25, was gunned down in February while jogging allegedly by an ex-policeman and his son in Georgia), and people exploded. We were now in this powder keg moment, and we all thought we’ve got to figure out a way to get this out now.”

Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown get together in One Night in Miami

Another star attraction was Concrete Cowboy, about a black teen caught between a life of crime and his estranged father, played by British star Idris Elba. Elba noted that the film, despite being set in a unique subculture of black horse trainers in Philadelphia, is still relevant to the community at large. “We made this movie 15 months ago, and it was before this pinnacle of awareness. But even then it was important to us that we tell the story of the fork in the road that you can take as a young man in this country, and we had been talking, like, wow, how poignant is this film particularly at this moment,” Elba said at TIFF.

The film festival also hosted prominent black actors and filmmakers such as Denzel Washington, Ava DuVernay, Barry Jenkins and Halle Berry in its In Conversation With… series. Berry, who said she moved from modelling to acting years ago to “find an outlet where I could express what I had to say”, spoke of the importance of going even further. “I would say create your own stories, write, direct, produce, create it for yourself. That’s what I did with Bruised and a few other projects that I’ve produced, so create, create, create — that is the power,” Berry declared.

TIFF has been a strong promoter of black talent in cinema, where films like 12 Years a Slave, Moonlight, Green Book and If Beale Street Could Talk have premiered or won awards in recent years before going on to shine at the box office and the Oscars. The platform just seemed even more topical this year.