A scene from Your Tomorrow, written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Ali Weinstein.Supplied
A new documentary about Ontario Place, the iconic cultural waterfront park undergoing a controversial redevelopment by Premier Doug Ford’s government, will have its world premiere at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival.
Your Tomorrow, written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Ali Weinstein, was filmed over almost 100 days, capturing Ontario Place as it stood on the precipice of major urban change, which is set to include the addition of a private spa and waterpark. TIFF organizers announced the film’s premiere Wednesday as the festival unveiled its full Docs program, which includes 21 titles from 24 countries.
Your Tomorrow, which will be broadcast and streamed via TVO late this year or early 2025 after its TIFF premiere, marks Weinstein’s second doc about Toronto landmarks whose legacies have been wiped away by redevelopment. In 2020, Weinstein produced the acclaimed film There’s No Place Like This Place Anyplace, director Lulu Wei’s look at the final days of the famed discount store Honest Ed’s.
Weinstein’s doc will arrive at the festival about a year after TIFF announced a “pause” in its relationship with Therme Group, the private Austrian company behind the large spa and waterpark development at Ontario Place, which has raised the ire of opposition politicians and community advocates. In 2021, TIFF and Therme announced a 10-year philanthropic partnership called the Cinematic Cities, but the two are no longer working together.
Your Tomorrow will arrive at the festival about a year after TIFF announced a 'pause' in its relationship with Therme Group, the private Austrian company behind the large spa and waterpark development at Ontario Place.Supplied
Other documentaries set for their world premieres at TIFF include Men of War, director Billy Corben and Jen Gatien’s look at a plot to overthrow the Venezuelan government; The Last Republican, a film from Hot Tub Time Machine director Steve Pink that profiles U.S. politician Adam Kinzinger as he breaks ranks with the GOP over Donald Trump; the Canadian film So Surreal: Behind the Masks, in which directors Neil Diamond and Joanne Robertson trace efforts to return cultural artifacts to Indigenous nations; and Vice is Broke, Eddie Huang’s journey to explore the rise and fall of the media giant he once worked for.
Two other newly announced TIFF selections likely to spark conversation will be the North American premiere of From Ground Zero, which collects 22 short films shot by filmmakers inside Gaza during the current war, and the Canadian premiere of No Other Land, made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four filmmakers documenting the ongoing conflict in the West Bank.
No Other Land, which was co-directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, premiered to acclaim at this past February’s Berlinale film festival. From Ground Zero, whose footage was organized by Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Masharawi, had its official world premiere at the Amman International Film Festival last month. Yet this past May, Masharawi staged a protest screening just outside the festival grounds at Cannes, following what he describes as the French festival’s refusal to program the doc.
“I will not allow the festival to decide that we do not exist, and to exclude our voices,” the director told the magazine +972. “So with many supporters and friends, I decided to force them to see us and hear us.”
No Other Land and From Ground Zero join two other Palestinian films so far scheduled to play TIFF this year. On Tuesday, TIFF organizers announced that Happy Holidays, an Israel-set drama from Palestinian filmmaker Scandar Copti, and To a Land Unknown, Mahdi Fleifel’s migrant docudrama that first premiered at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight program in May, would play this year’s Centrepiece program.
Your Tomorrow, which will be broadcast and streamed via TVO late this year or early 2025 after its TIFF premiere, marks Weinstein’s second doc about Toronto landmarks whose legacies have been wiped away by redevelopment.Supplied
The films will make their way to Toronto as arts organizations across the world have struggled to find their places within the intense public division over the war in Gaza. Earlier this spring, TIFF’s chief executive Cameron Bailey and chief programming officer Anita Lee released a “programming statement for peace,” calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the safe return of Israeli hostages taken this past Oct. 7.
TIFF, which last week announced that Rogers Communications is coming onboard as the presenting sponsor of its 49th annual festival, will run from Sept. 5-15. Organizers will announce films from the festival’s Wavelengths, Classics, Short Cuts and Primetime programs throughout this week.