Giants of Africa is the documentary about the Toronto Raptors basketball team’s general manager, Masai Ujiri, and the basketball camps he runs in four countries in Africa. It was filmed last summer, when Ujiri expanded the basketball project from his native Nigeria, to the three other countries, Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda.
“Empowering youth”
Hubert Davis is the director of the documentary. Davis is the first Afro-Canadian to be nominated for an Academy Award, for the documentary called Hardwood, which is the story of his father, former Harlem Globetrotter, Mel Davis.
In an interview with CBC this afternoon, Davis said the experience of shooting the film in Africa in just three weeks last summer “was a real eye-opener for me being born and raised in North America”. He said, “really what the documentary is about is empowering youth and through that we met some incredible characters who we followed and followed their stories”. He said the highlight was getting to know these people, and now, getting to share their stories.
Some of the other Canadian films, screening in a variety of programs at the 10-day festival, include Alanis Obomsawin’s latest. The aboriginal film maker is back with a documentary about the child and family welfare services for First Nations Children. We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice, is the title of the film that traces the issues that lead to the Assembly of First Nations’ human rights complaint against the federal government.
Deepa Mehta is back with a fictional account of the brutal sexual assault of the young Indian girl on New Delhi bus. Anatomy of Violence looks into the lives of the six men involved in the attack, who then threw her body, naked and beaten, onto the street.
Deepa Mehta’s brother, Dilip Mehta also has a film in the festival. Mostly Sunny is the story of Sunny Leone, from Sarnia, Ontario. Once known as Karenjit Kaur Vohra, until Bob Guccione, of Penthouse magazine, gave her the name that has stayed with her, as she evolved through the adult film world to a Bollywood and reality TV star.
Xavier Dolan‘s latest film, the Cannes Grand Prix winner this year, It’s Only the End of the World will have its north American premier during the September festival, that runs from the 8th to the 18th this year.
Along with a great venue for Canada’s talent, the Toronto International Film Festival is a favourite outing for many of the big Hollywood studios to feature their films, with the stars happy to spend some time on the Canadian red carpet.
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