Ep. 79: Are we in a Golden Age of Documentary Film?

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In 2018 alone, three documentaries:</span> <em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Won’t You Be My Neighbor, RBG,</span></em> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">and</span> <em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Three Identical Strangers</span></em> <span style="font-weight: 400;">have exceeded $10 million at the domestic box office, a remarkable trend considering only 25 other documentaries has reached this milestone in the past 35 years. To find out what is leading to this sudden increase in the genre’s popularity, Rob and Geoff are joined by TIFF programmer, and host of the documentary themed podcast ‘Pure Nonfiction’, Thom Powers.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Powers discusses how “documentary” went from a dirty word to a financially viable genre,  how Netflix helped expand the artform, and the technological innovations that have changed the genre for the better.</span></p> <p><br /> <span style="font-weight: 400;">He then goes through some of the more anticipated documentary titles coming to TIFF next month including: Michael Moore’s</span> <em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Fahrenheit 11/9,</span></em> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">Werner Herzog’s</span> <em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Meeting Gorbachev,</span></em> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">Alexis Bloom’s</span> <em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes,</span></em> <span style="font-weight: 400;">John Chester’s</span> <em><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Biggest Little Farm,</span></em> <span style="font-weight: 400;">E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s</span> <em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Free Solo,</span></em> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">and Errol Morris’</span> <em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">American Dharma.</span></em></p>