Emerging filmmakers look to Toronto documentary festival to launch new careers

TORONTO – New York was the obvious place to stage the world premiere of the Manhattan-based, celeb-packed documentary “Radioman,” an affectionate portrait of a scruffy movie fanatic who has wormed his way onto more than 100 film sets.

Instead, the filmmakers settled on making their debut at Toronto’s Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, believing the massive conference would offer a spotlight that even the Big Apple would be unable to match.

“It’s meant to be pretty much the best documentary market there is,” “Radioman” producer Paul Fischer said from his home in London as he and director Mary Kerr prepared to bring their film to Canada.

“We considered premieres in festivals that aren’t exclusively for documentaries and even then we would hear, ‘Look, a lot of broadcasters, distributors, they won’t see it anyway until they come to Hot Docs.’ In that sense it’s really, really exciting because it seems like a week that helps you with the business side of it as much as the screening side.”

The annual showcase kicks off Thursday with a wide range of films that include a look at rocker Rick Springfield’s most ardent fans, the dramatic rise and fall of tormented hockey player Theo Fleury, the soap opera stints of movie star James Franco, and the people who knew — or thought they knew — serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

The 11-day festival, billed as North America’s largest documentary event, kicks off with “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” a portrait of Chinese dissident and artist Ai Weiwei, by U.S. filmmaker Alison Klayman.

That doc delves into the iconoclast’s controversial critiques of China’s oppressive regime, the rise of his own fame and a look at his growing followers.

Programming manager Sarafina DiFelice predicts one of the hottest tickets will be Sylvia Caminer’s look at Springfield fans in “An Affair of the Heart,” noting that the “Jessie’s Girl” hitmaker is scheduled to attend and take questions.

“What really comes through in his doc especially is the power that that kind of connection an artist can have with an audience,” says DiFelice. “I think it’ll be a very big screening.”

Other guests bound for the fest include war photographer Don McCullin from Jacqui Morris’s profile “McCullin,” artist and “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” puppeteer Wayne White from Neil Berkeley’s “Beauty Is Embarrassing” and Dahmer-case detective Pat Kennedy from “Jeff.”

“The person who got the confession out of Jeffrey Dahmer must be a fascinating Q&A….. the film itself is really exceptional,” DeFelice says of “Jeff.”

“The director … does this amazing job of creating this world that people didn’t notice at the time.”

Also sure to provoke is the hard-hitting doc “The Invisible War” from award-winning filmmaker Kirby Dick. It exposes a stunning prevalence of rape within the U.S. military, where policies more often end up protecting the attackers and persecuting the victims.

DiFelice notes that several films this year focus on “following your bliss” and how unbridled passions have led to something deeply satisfying — whether that be Springfield and his music, Radioman and his obsession with celebrity culture, or White and his tongue-in-cheek art.

“Without knowing where it was going to lead them they did the things that they believed in right and it led to something fulfilling,” she says, pointing to White as a particularly “inspiring and hilarious” speaker.

“There are pretty inspiring stories even though they’re very different stories.”

Even Larry Day’s often dark portrait, “Theo Fleury: Playing with Fire,” strains to offer more than a tragic look at the hockey hero’s well-documented journey from abuse to addiction, highlighting the inspiration he’s become to other child abuse survivors.

Day, whose wife Kirstie McLellan Day co-wrote the bestselling book “Playing With Fire,” says he didn’t want to do a traditional hockey documentary.

“This is more of a character study about an intriguing personality who in many ways is a walking contradiction,” says Day, who traces Fleury’s demons to a volatile home life as a child and the sexual abuse from his coach as a teen.

“He’s mercurial but very charismatic, he’s funny, he’s at times angry, he’s very smart and yet he’s capable of doing some foolish things and just about anything you can imagine happening to a hockey player has happened to Theoren Fleury.”

Organizers says 146 directors — a record number — are slated to introduce their films and participate in post-screening audience Q&As. They include Jennifer Lynch, daughter of cult film auteur David Lynch, who is featured in Penny Vozniak’s “Despite the Gods.”

Canadian docs include Angad Singh Bhalla’s “Herman’s House,” about imprisoned Black Panther Herman Wallace and Maya Gallus’s feature “The Mystery of Mazo de la Roche,” which digs into the private life of the enigmatic female writer.

Fischer says he and Kerr prefer to think of their work as non-fiction rather than documentary, noting that these films are meant to tell a story.

By necessity, that means some manipulation of the facts is involved, with hours and hours of footage typically left on the cutting room floor to make a point, he notes.

“The whole idea of truth and fact and how much stuff is manipulated and where the barrier is, I think that’s a really interesting thing.”

He notes that “Radioman” could have been a dark story about a lonely, mentally ill man whose obsession with a cinematic fantasy life has him stalking New York film sets.

Instead, Fischer and Kerr reveal a gleeful super-fan whose infectious zeal for movies has lifted him out of addiction, homelessness and charmed A-listers across the board.

As a result, Radioman, whose real name is Craig Castaldo, has landed cameos in a slew of New York-shot films including “Shutter Island,” “The Bourne Supremacy,” “The Departed” and “Tower Heist.”

“I’m actually convinced he’s happy and what he has is as real as anything else,” says Fischer, who snagged interviews with Radioman fans including Robin Williams, Helen Mirren, George Clooney, Ron Howard and Sting.

The first-time filmmaker says he’s eager to see how audiences react to the feature, noting that Hot Docs offers a crucial platform for connecting with audiences amid a competitive market.

“A lot of it is sort of finding somewhere where you don’t just sort of disappear,” Fischer says of choosing Toronto to make his splash. “That was really important to us.”

Hot Docs will screen 189 docs from 51 countries. It runs through May 6.