{"id":125418,"date":"2025-08-07T04:32:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T04:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/125418\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T04:32:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T04:32:11","slug":"ben-proudfoots-obamas-backed-eyes-of-ghana-set-for-toronto-doc-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/125418\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Proudfoot\u2019s Obamas-Backed Eyes of Ghana Set for Toronto Doc Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOscar-winning director \u2019s The Eyes of Ghana, executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama<\/a>, is set to open the Toronto Film Festival<\/a>\u2019s Doc sidebar, organizers said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\n\tNova Scotia-raised and L.A.-based Proudfoot won his two Academy Awards<\/a> for his short documentary films The Queen of Basketball and The Last Repair Shop that impressed Oscar voters with their cinematic poetry and craft.<\/p>\n

\n\tNow it has taken the Obamas\u2019 Higher Ground Productions and Oscar-nominated documentary maker Moses Bwayo to convince Proudfoot to bring his emotional and immersive storytelling to the feature documentary with a portrait of Chris Hesse, the personal cinematographer for Kwame Nkrumah who reveals a vast library of lost films about the legendary African leader to modern audiences.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s no word on whether the Obamas will be in Toronto for the world premiere of The Eyes of Ghana, which also recounts the rise and fall of Nkrumah, who was toppled by a 1966 Ghanaian coup d\u2019\u00e9tat. But alongside Proudfoot, the Obamas have their own Oscar kudos for American Factory, the documentary executive produced by Higher Ground and directed by documentarians Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar as they took home the award for best documentary at the 2020 Academy Awards.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tOrwell: 2+2=5<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGoodfellas\/Jigsaw Prods.\/Velvet Film<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 2020 TIFF<\/a> Docs will feature in all 23 documentaries, with 16 being world premieres.<\/p>\n

\n\tThese include John Dower\u2019s The Balloonists, about adventurers setting out to circle the globe in a balloon; Tasha Van Zandt\u2019s A Life Illuminated, about marine biologist Dr. Edie Widder exploring the ocean depths; Christopher Nelius\u2019 Whistle, centering on a competition for champion whistlers; and Nuns vs. the Vatican, from director Lorena Luciano and executive producer Mariska Hargitay, as the film exposes predatory priests abusing nuns inside the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s also first looks for director Billy Corben\u2019s Canceled: The Paula Deen Story, about the scandal surrounding the celebrity chef using racial slurs in the workplace; and Nicole Baziun\u2019s Modern Whore, about the sex industry through the eyes of former sex worker and advocate Andrea Werhun; Free Solo and Nyad filmmakers Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin\u2019s Love+War, their latest film that follows news the longtime film collaborators have filed for a divorce; and Still Single, from filmmakers Jamal Burger and Jukan Tateisi.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tPut Your Soul on Your Hand on Walk<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tReves d\u2019eau Productions<\/p>\n

\n\tTIFf also booked North American premieres for Raoul Peck\u2019s Orwell: 2+2=5, about the life of famed writer George Orwell and which bowed in Cannes; Lucrecia Martel\u2019s Nuestra Tierra, about land ownership and indigenous struggles in Latin America and set to bow first in Venice; A Simple Soldier, by Juan Camilo Cruz and Artem Ryzhykov, where Ukrainian filmmaker Ryzhykov gets in front of the camera as a real life soldier fighting Russia on his country\u2019s front lines; Sepideh Farsi\u2019s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, where an Iranian filmmaker follows Palestinian photojournalist Fatma Hassona under bombardment in Gaza, only to see her killed by the Israeli Defense Forces just days before the film\u2019s debut in Cannes<\/a>; and The Tale of Silyan, by director Tamara Kotevska and set to bow in Venice.<\/p>\n

\n\tOther 2025 Doc titles include a Canadian premiere for the Venice-bound Cover-Up, by directors Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus and about the journalism of Seymour Hersh; Michele Stephenson\u2019s True North; Sky Hopinka\u2019s Powwow People; Zahraa Ghandour\u2019s Flana; Darlene Naponse\u2019s Aki; Shane Belcourt\u2019s Ni-Naadamaadiz: Red Power Rising; Min Sook Lee\u2019s There Are No Words, where the award-winning filmmaker explores her mother\u2019s fatal suicide 40 years earlier for the National Film Board of Canada; and Peter Mettler\u2019s While the Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts, a seven hour film. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Toronto Film Festival, set to run Sept. 4 to 14, will open with Colin Hanks\u2019 John Candy documentary,\u00a0John Candy: I Like Me.\u00a0More lineup announcements will be made this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar-winning director \u2019s The Eyes of Ghana, executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, is set to open…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":125419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[15797,11744,77122,171,57471,53,15801,64287,77123,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-125418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-academy-awards","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-ben-proudfoot","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-michelle-obama","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-oscars","15":"tag-tiff","16":"tag-toronto-film-festival","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114985615153169810","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}