E58 • Inside the Mind of a Festival Gatekeeper • Thom Powers, Lead Documentary Programmer of the Toronto International Film Festival

Thom Powers, a renowned documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), former artistic director of DocNYC, and host of the “Pure Nonfiction” podcast, delves into his journey from filmmaker to influential festival curator. Thom shares behind-the-scenes details about programming films like “The Bibi Files,” directed by Alexis Bloom, and Rebecca Huntt’s “Beba,” highlighting the unique power of documentaries to engage audiences. 

Thom emphasizes the importance of community within the filmmaking ecosystem, explores the nuanced selection process at major film festivals, and candidly reflects on the future challenges and opportunities facing documentary distribution today. Thom also reveals his all-time favorite documentary, the 1989 Oscar-winning “Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie,” directed by Marcel Ophuls. 

This conversation is a true masterclass for filmmakers eager to understand how documentaries find their audience and why curators like Powers are pivotal in shaping the documentary landscape.

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Introducing the Past Present Feature Film Festival, a new showcase celebrating cinematic storytelling across time. From bold proof of concept shorts to stand out new films lighting up the circuit, to overlooked features that deserve another look. 

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Chapters

• 0:31 Past Present Feature, Hosted by Marcus Mizelle
• 0:51 Thom Powers, TIFF Lead Documentary Programmer

Transcript

Marcus Mizelle (00:21)
on today's episode, Tom Powers, documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival, former artistic director of Doc NYC and host of the Pure Nonfiction podcast, delves into his journey from filmmaker to influential festival curator. Tom shares behind the scenes details about programming films like The Beebe Files, directed by Alexis Bloom and Rebecca Hunt's Bebe.

highlighting documentaries' unique power to engage audiences.

Tom emphasizes the importance of community within the filmmaking ecosystem, explores the nuanced selection process at major film festivals, and candidly reflects on the future challenges and opportunities facing documentary distribution today. Tom also reveals his all-time favorite documentary, the 1989 Oscar-winning Hotel Terminus, The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie, directed by Marcel Ofels.

This conversation is a true masterclass for filmmakers eager to understand how documentaries find their audience and why curators like Powers are pivotal in shaping the documentary landscape.

Marcus Mizelle (01:21)
How busy are you right now, actually? What does it look like on your side as far as programming TIFF and the thick of it?

Thom Powers (01:26)
⁓ the,

know, between now and mid July is constant, ⁓ work. ⁓ I mean, it's, it's obviously watching, ⁓ films. ⁓ but it's also answering emails and interacting with my colleagues and having conversations about how we feel about this film, ⁓ or that film. And, ⁓ but, ⁓ you know, I think a lot of it is just like carrying the weight of.

⁓ decisions. you know, the first thing that I do when I wake up is I think about the emails I have to write or maybe think about a film that I watched yesterday and, ⁓ you know, what I'm thinking about it going back and forth in my head about it and...

Marcus Mizelle (01:57)
Mmm.

Thom Powers (02:16)
I'm having those conversations in my head ⁓ all day long, and the last thing I think about before I go to bed ⁓ is a version of those questions.

Marcus Mizelle (02:25)
You are a documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival and the artistic director of America's largest doc festival doc NYC You host the podcast pure nonfiction big fan by the way For the TIF podcast network and documentary of the week for New York's public radio station WNYC Also, you were and still are a documentary filmmaker, right?

Thom Powers (02:47)
I did spend 10 years as a documentary filmmaker. I have not practiced that in at least 20 years.

And the other asterisk I would say to the biography you read is at DocNYC, was its artistic director for the first 12 years of the festival. And I stepped down from that three years ago. Now I just run ⁓ the event called Visionaries Tribute for DocNYC, but it's in the very able hands of Jay LaPlante as the artistic director.

Marcus Mizelle (03:05)
⁓

Got you, got you, got you, thank I saw that you made a movie called Private Dick's Men Exposed.

Thom Powers (03:25)
That's right.

I mean the background to that is the very first documentary that I produced was for a woman director named Mima Spadola and it's called Brass. It's interviews with women about their breasts. was an all women crew. I was behind the scenes as a producer on it. And we produced that independently in... ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (03:27)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Thom Powers (03:50)
We started in 1995 and finished it in 1996. ⁓ Well, in 1996, there was really only one place that we could have imagined it ⁓ being on, ⁓ and that was HBO Cinemax. ⁓

We sent it to them and we hadn't produced it with that intention. We produced it because we never produced anything before and we wanted to make a film. We thought maybe this would play at some film festivals and we could at least say we had made a film when we went and tried to make our next film. ⁓ But ⁓ Sheila Evans at HBO, ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (04:27)
Got you.

Thom Powers (04:35)
responded strongly to it and ⁓ and Brest was aired on Cinemax in 1997 and ⁓ did very well for them. I think there was something in the zeitgeist at the time because that was the same year that ⁓ the Vagina Monologues ⁓ came out, the small downtown theater production before it became a global phenomenon. and Sheila Evans after its successor Brest

Marcus Mizelle (04:52)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I remember that.

Thom Powers (05:04)
asked Mima and I to do one on men and their bodies and that was Private Dix then

Marcus Mizelle (05:10)
Yeah. Okay.

Thom Powers (05:10)
in a way I could say there's three stages to my

career. I spent about seven years in publishing, 10 years as a documentary filmmaker, and the last 20 years as a festival programmer.

Marcus Mizelle (05:24)
it's just comforting to know that our films are in good hands when we submit, you know, because you're not just a programmer, right? You do have this, I would think, ⁓ stronger perspective because you've made docs. Why your love for

Thom Powers (05:37)
You know, it's a very good question ⁓ and one that I probably haven't spent enough time trying to answer directly and I think like anything in our life there's... ⁓

I could probably tell three different versions of an answer that story and they'd all be true in some way and they would all leave something out ⁓ in some way. ⁓ I think ⁓ my interest in film and also ⁓ books...

Marcus Mizelle (06:05)
Hmm

Thom Powers (06:18)
was kindled as a teenager. I grew up in suburban Detroit. And I think the suburbs were a place where it didn't feel like anything was happening and felt like the rest of the world was where things actually happened. And for me to experience those things until I start to...

Marcus Mizelle (06:35)
you

Thom Powers (06:48)
have my independence and travel myself, the way to experience those things ⁓ were books and films. in that process, ⁓ documentaries really stood out to me. I I had a great love for fiction films and documentaries, but at some point, like a racehorse shooting way ahead, ⁓ documentaries ⁓ really far outpaced ⁓ what

Marcus Mizelle (06:55)
that makes sense.

Thom Powers (07:17)
fiction films give to me.

Marcus Mizelle (07:19)
That happened to me about five years ago. Same kind of thing. Not the Detroit upbringing, but the North Carolina upbringing, like similar kind of like being in the middle of nowhere and being bored to tears and ⁓ living ⁓ life through movies. And I was in love with fiction forever. And then about five or six years ago, ⁓ after trying to make micro-budget film after micro-budget film and not getting much anywhere, I did a documentary in my hometown about basketball and... ⁓

I fell in love with documentaries, like not just making them, but also watching them and devouring them and like, my God, where have I been this whole time? it's so authentic and real. And that's really the ingredients that I'm trying to hang around.

and it's just, they're so built in. I don't miss having to, honestly, direct actors into something believable. Like that's like, that's already there. It's like, the main ingredient in my opinion, or one of them. Anyways, okay, so the pivot point of when did you start kind of programming and curating? And yeah.

Thom Powers (08:17)
So,

yeah, so I'd spent 10 years ⁓ making films and was in my late 30s and going through a reevaluation of what it was I'd been doing for last 10 years. And I had to recognize that the thing I...

loved most about making documentary films was showing them to an audience. The buildup until that, I think there are some people who really love being out in the field shooting. I think there are some people who really love editing and pulling things together. ⁓ Those things, I did not have ⁓ as ⁓ much an innate love for ⁓ just for the pure sense of doing it. ⁓

What I did enjoy doing is when that film was ready, like thinking about who needs to see this film and how do I get them into a theater and how do we present this to ⁓ give it its best chance in the world. I, in New York City around 2005, I knew a lot of other filmmakers who ⁓

were in a similar boat to me in that they had invested a lot of time making films and had a shortage of places to put them and a shortage of ways to reach an audience. the first thing I did in the step two doing film festivals is in 2005.

The IFC Center in New York City had just opened and I proposed to the manager, John Vanco, that we do a Tuesday night series, ⁓ which we called Stranger Than Fiction, because I knew all these documentary filmmakers who would love to show their film in a theater ⁓ for a night. And in fact, you know, a lot of those filmmakers

Marcus Mizelle (10:14)
you

Thom Powers (10:25)
they might come back from a festival like Sundance or Toronto or South by Southwest or any big festival. And the most common experience of showing a film festival like that is not the experience that gets mythologized a lot, which is that your film sells to a big distributor. That happens to a small fraction of the films.

Marcus Mizelle (10:47)
Right.

Thom Powers (10:51)
The most common experience is you come back from that festival, having had a great experience, and now you're eager to show it to more people, but ⁓ it's not that easy to do. And in 2005, I knew a lot of filmmakers who they'd come back from, you know, having premiered at a festival, and there was still a bunch of people in New York City they wanted to show the film to. They'd have to rent their own theater, you know, pay 600 bucks or something like that to ⁓ rent a theater. Yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (11:17)
Four wall situation.

Thom Powers (11:21)
And ⁓ at IFC Center, I saw the opportunity where we could ⁓ pay them a little bit of money in the form of an honorarium to show their film. So they wouldn't be out of pocket and we'd give them a good experience where they could gather the people in New York they wanted to watch this film. So that was how it all gets started.

Marcus Mizelle (11:40)
was just

missing this opportunity, this missing hole, this puzzle piece that you had that you saw, I guess, right? It's kind like this podcast where I'm like, I have these filmmaker friends and I feel like we all have so much more to say than what a Q &A allows. Let me start a podcast. Four years later, I finally did it. But it's like, sometimes it's right there in front of you. It's just, if it's needed, then do it if you care about it. Kind of, right? Would you say it's similar to that? It sounds like that.

Thom Powers (12:03)
Yeah, I I think, you I had cleared time for myself because I had decided that I was not going to ⁓ invest myself into making another film. was trying to think about what else I could do with the passion I had for documentary film. so, you know, at first, starting the series, Strange in the Fiction was...

Marcus Mizelle (12:09)
Hmm.

Thom Powers (12:33)
You know, just like I didn't have a big career path ahead of me. In doing that, it was more reactive than ⁓ forward thinking.

Marcus Mizelle (12:45)
Got

your programming philosophy. Is there one, or is that too broad of a question?

Thom Powers (12:50)
Well, you know, it depends on what I'm programming for. You know, I've had the experience of programming in New York City and at the Toronto Film Festival and I program for the Miami Film Festival and my wife and I started DocNYC and we started a film festival in Montclair, New Jersey where we live. And, you know, each one of those has a

different ⁓ mission, I'd say, to it. A lot of times the mission is ⁓ geographic driven, when I'm programming Miami. If there are films that feel especially relevant to South Florida, ⁓ those are gonna get extra attention from me. Then I necessarily give them when I'm programming for ⁓ New Jersey and vice versa. So that's a kind of simple one. ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (13:45)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Got you.

Thom Powers (13:50)
Toronto is perhaps the most unique situation because it is a big ⁓ global platform. right now, I'm ⁓ overseeing more than 900, nearly a thousand documentary submissions ⁓ with our team. I think that's our record. I mean, we'll wind up showing, you know,

Marcus Mizelle (14:14)
How many do you select, ultimately? 100?

Thom Powers (14:19)
25 or so documentaries in the documentary section. There's always a few other documentaries say in the gala section, you know, if there's a know a couple of years ago we showed a film about Lil Nas X in the gala section last year We showed the Elton John film in the gala section this year. We've already announced At TIFF that the opening night film is a documentary about John Candy. So there you know some of those

Marcus Mizelle (14:35)
you

Thom Powers (14:49)
kinds of films that lend themselves to the red carpet treatment, they will play in the gala section. And occasionally some might play in our special presentation section, which also ⁓ goes along with having a certain amount of star power to it. So ⁓ we showed a film about Paul Simon a couple of years ago in the special presentation section. ⁓ And the other place where...

Marcus Mizelle (15:14)
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

Thom Powers (15:18)
documentaries reliably appear if they are the more experimental side is the Wavelength section that's curated by ⁓ Andrea Picard. But most of the documentaries at Toronto ⁓ appear in the section called Tiff Docs and

I oversee that, but I also work with a team of nearly 20 programmers who feed into that section. we have ⁓ many programmers on staff that have ⁓ regional specialties. My colleague Diana Kedavid ⁓ has been programming out of Latin America for ⁓ more than a decade. ⁓

My colleague Dorothee Lech ⁓ has a deep background ⁓ in Eastern European films and so on. So I really benefit from having many sets of expertise

Marcus Mizelle (16:23)
the programming process from start to finish in broad terms, you know, get all these submissions, you have all these, you have help, ⁓ have some qualified help here with the programming team. ⁓ How do you whittle it down and how do you kind of move on? How do you, ⁓ you know,

decide on something that you do think will move to the next phase. Like what does that look like for just for filmmakers to know, you know?

Thom Powers (16:45)
So, you know, of the thousand or so submissions we have this year, ⁓ I think, you know, maybe roughly half or 60 % of those are not going to be right for TIFF because they're just not made as, you know,

professionally or fulsomely as the other films we're looking at. So, there's a certain number of films that we can look at and say, you know what, this isn't right for us. In that it's...

Marcus Mizelle (17:15)
sure.

Mm-hmm.

Thom Powers (17:24)
it doesn't have an audience elsewhere, it's not, if we put that on the screen at TIFF, people would say, is not up to the quality that we expect from going to this festival. So, that covers like 60 % of the films. That still leaves 400 or so films that...

Marcus Mizelle (17:37)
Sure.

Half the amount? Yeah.

Thom Powers (17:49)
have substance to them ⁓ and that are worth a serious consideration. ⁓ In that process, the quality that I'm most looking for is to be surprised. So.

Marcus Mizelle (18:09)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Thom Powers (18:13)
So there's a certain number of films that I see and I feel like, okay, well, this film may ⁓ connect to an audience, but I've seen something that's kind of like it before. Or it covers a subject that in a way that doesn't feel surprising. And I... ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (18:37)
Sure, yeah.

Thom Powers (18:43)
I mean, one thing I'll say about TIFF is that because it gathers the world's press and industry around film and gathers audiences that have been consistently going to that festival over the last 50 years of its existence, they come with a certain set of expectations.

Marcus Mizelle (19:01)
Mm-hmm.

Sure. Yeah.

Thom Powers (19:13)
If... I

If a film isn't meeting those expectations, they're likely to be more harsh on it than they would if they saw it in a different setting. I've seen films at smaller festivals get a really good review in a trade journal.

Marcus Mizelle (19:29)
That's so interesting, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Wow, you.

Thom Powers (19:47)
And I can feel pretty confident that if we showed that same film at Toronto, ⁓ it would have been at risk of being reviewed more harshly just because the expectations are in a different place.

Marcus Mizelle (20:01)
Sure. What's even like,

I'm gonna go see 28 Years Later tonight and I've heard mixed reviews. So I'm trying to manage my expectations because I want to like it. But also I'm like, let me just drop them down because it's a real thing. The expectation of a film before you go watch it versus just like walking into a film with knowing nothing, right? It's always a-

It makes sense. It makes sense. You got a lot of pressure on you. Good Lord.

Thom Powers (20:22)
Expectations are a real thing,

But I think sometimes expectations are, look, we're lucky in a setting like TIFF that people do have expectations and you can kind of play with those expectations. So last year, one of the films that,

Marcus Mizelle (21:22)
Mm-hmm.

Thom Powers (21:30)
I spent a lot of time considering its presentation was The BB Files by Alexis Bloom. And that was a film that we announced just a few days before the festival. We were gonna be showing it as a work in progress, because they had a little bit more work to do on it. It wound up being finished a couple months later and wasn't substantially different than the version we showed.

Marcus Mizelle (21:51)
you

Thom Powers (21:59)
But I knew it was going to be ⁓ a film that would gain a lot of headlines. And so I worked carefully.

with the film team, including producer Alex Gibney to figure out what's the best way for us to announce this film. What are we gonna say about it? What are we gonna let people discover for themselves about it? ⁓ So not every film is ⁓ quite as ⁓ highly charged as that one,

Marcus Mizelle (22:20)
Mm-hmm.

The BB Files is a 2024 American documentary directed by Alexis Bloom. The film features leaked interrogation footage from the trial of Benjamin Netanyahu. The screen is a work in progress film at 2024 TIFF and had its official world premiere at doc

something ⁓ that that was kind of more under the radar

Thom Powers (22:56)
I think the film I would point to in that category ⁓ is the film, Beba, which was a ⁓ debut documentary by Rebecca Hunt. ⁓ I didn't know anything about the film when it was ⁓ sent to me. ⁓ And...

And I was watching it at the end of the day when I probably watched some or all of 10 other films. And I put that film in at 9.30 at night so that I'd have one fewer film to watch the next day. And there's sometimes when you're programming where you just like, it's a...

Marcus Mizelle (23:41)
Okay.

Thom Powers (23:48)
You know, it's a numbers game. you you've got to get through so many films each week. so you just, you know, take that extra shot of caffeine and open your eyes and give it your attention. But I had no expectations for this film. And when I was like five minutes into it, I thought, wow, this is, this is, you know, more interesting than anything else I've seen today. And when I was 15 minutes into it, I was kind of like,

Marcus Mizelle (23:53)
That's the reality of it, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Thom Powers (24:17)
you know, looking around the room, ⁓ ask myself, like, this really as good as I think it is? And when I get in that zone, and then I get halfway through the film, I'm really just, like, saying to the screen, like, don't fuck this up. Like, this is a really good film. ⁓ Please let it finish strong. And that one ⁓ certainly did. ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (24:34)
Hahaha.

That's

the mindset I'm always trying to do when I'm editing, editing, editing, next cut, next cut, next cut. It's like, okay, think we're good here in this sequence. I don't wanna fuck this up. This is moving, this is moving. Even when you're screening it with some of my friends and family, it's like engaging their energy.

Thom Powers (24:57)
⁓ that's a big part of the process.

Marcus Mizelle (25:00)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. quick, Beba. Beba. It's a documentary self-portrait by a young filmmaker whose sense of identity is bound up with their family and their place in the times, the political currents and societal events that have shaped their lives and senses of self. It's by Rebecca Hunt.

Thom Powers (25:14)
for that film, I mean, you're asking what goes into it when it's not as catchy a film as, The BB Files. part of the job for me is to talk to the filmmaker, figure out what their goals are. In that case,

Marcus Mizelle (25:26)
Mm-hmm.

Thom Powers (25:43)
⁓ was it.

you know, a filmmaker who did not have a lot of industry contact. So, you know, I tried to make recommendations about who it could be a good publicist and who could be a good sales agent. And, ⁓ and I tried to, you know, make some calls before the festival to people in the distribution world to say, you know, I think this is one that you should look out for. and the film had a very happy outcome. It was acquired by ⁓ Neon.

Marcus Mizelle (25:51)
Mm-hmm.

Thom Powers (26:16)
at the 2021 Toronto Film Festival. So it was great.

Marcus Mizelle (26:22)
We need champions like you. Thank you. We do. It's a big deal.

Thom Powers (26:25)
Well,

there's a lot of people who kind of work behind the scenes as publicists or ⁓ agents or executive producers or a lot of friends of documentary and...

do

think that building a network is important in this world. And one of the things that was an early lesson to me when I made films, I remember going to...

the mixers that would be thrown by what was then called IFP, the Independent Film Project these days is called Gotham. every September, it would be a showcase for filmmakers with works in progress. And back in the 1990s, I went to several of those with ⁓ films that I was trying to get funded. inevitably there'd be

some happy hour of a ⁓ bunch of filmmakers in a room, ⁓ making small talk, but all kind of like looking over each other's shoulders to see if there was a funder ⁓ in the room. ⁓ now the funders had a good sense to stay away from those rooms. So really it was just a bunch of filmmakers who were ⁓ feeling some...

Marcus Mizelle (27:42)
Okay.

Thom Powers (27:57)
frustration. ⁓ But, and, you know, oftentimes I would walk out of those happy hours and feel like, like, you know, what good was that? I just met a bunch of other filmmakers who are in the same ⁓ boat as me. ⁓ But over the years, I realized that those filmmakers that I had met at those events were

Marcus Mizelle (27:59)
Yeah, sure.

Thom Powers (28:25)
way more enduring as relationships and important as relationships because I had, I was in the same boat with them ⁓ and we could share information. Sometimes we could share equipment. Yes, yes, yes.

Marcus Mizelle (28:41)
Community is so huge. You know that Malcolm Gladwell book,

The Outliers, did you ever read that? The prologue was the oldest living ⁓ lifespan per capita in the United States is in this Pennsylvania community made up of Sicilian immigrants. the thing, the long story short is that they do everything together. They're community. And like community equals happiness and health, right?

Thom Powers (28:50)
I am not.

Mm-hmm.

Marcus Mizelle (29:08)
It just translates. I was at the Berlin Film Festival the week before COVID ⁓ and we did this, we got invited to this luncheon on the Sunday. It was literally church hours. It was like church. And man, it was, that's what spurred this podcast for me where it's like, my God, this is like hundred filmmakers who are just insanely obsessed with this. It's just like I am. And I haven't had this before. So I was like, how do I recreate that? It took me four years to figure it out, but community, community is.

Thom Powers (29:27)
Hmm.

Marcus Mizelle (29:36)
freaking huge, it's necessary, you know? And as a filmmaker, you spend so much time just in a vacuum, you know, sitting by yourself, filming by yourself, editing or whatever. It's nice and wonderful when you get to, when you're able to share that and of course, to screen your films at a bigger festival and be championed by these people such as yourself. ⁓ Okay, so let me ask you

Is there any certain values with like the film's narrative structure versus its like thematic aspects? Is there any kind of thing that stands out more than others as far as what you're looking for? Or is it really just, can be anything. It can be more commercial than art. It can be art commercial. As long as it surprises you, as long as it speaks to you, that's really the baseline,

Thom Powers (30:20)
I think in putting together a festival program, you're also looking for a sense of balance in how these films ⁓ come together as a group. ⁓ this year, for instance, we're seeing a lot of films ⁓ about ⁓ the war in Ukraine. ⁓

as we have for the past couple years. ⁓ many worthy films coming from different angles. ⁓

I could show three or four of them, ⁓ but given that I have a small spectrum of films to ⁓ show, I also need to make space for other stories from other parts of the world. ⁓ Every year you could fill those 25 slots with super serious ⁓ human rights films.

Marcus Mizelle (31:14)
Yeah

Thom Powers (31:26)
And every year you could fill those 25 slots with celebrity films that are going to be extremely welcomed by fans of those celebrities. neither one of those would be the right thing to do. ⁓ in a scope of 25 films, you hope that you're covering a lot of different things on the spectrum.

Marcus Mizelle (31:32)
Hmm.

God bless you. God bless you.

So one of my sales agents says, it's like, we're just, the buyers are looking for trending topics and celebrity, like branded content essentially, which I don't know if that's correct information, but I'm like, well, what about everything else? You know, like what about the unsung, the underdogs, man? Like I make underdog outsider stories. Like what about those guys? Because that's got so much power and that's not usually trending or maybe it can be trending, but it's definitely not celebrity branded based. And so it's nice to.

Thom Powers (32:11)
Well,

Marcus Mizelle (32:23)
to hear you guys also take a chance on, right? Something that's just maybe off the path a little bit.

Thom Powers (32:29)
there's sometimes that I will see a film and think, ⁓ you know, mean, A, I have to like it. ⁓ But, you know, if I like it and I think, ⁓ you know, I think that this could go into wider distribution, like, you know, that's a...

Marcus Mizelle (32:36)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Thom Powers (32:48)
great use of ⁓ Toronto's platform because we have the buyers in the audience who are looking for those films. And so if I can match a film to a community of buyers and help get it out in the world, ⁓ that's great. There are other times I see a film that I think, you know what, this is so commercial, it's such a commercial vehicle, it actually doesn't need ⁓ TIFF to get out in the world.

Marcus Mizelle (33:11)
Mm-hmm. Okay, yeah.

Thom Powers (33:17)
it'll find, you know, there's some films that I think can be a commercial vehicle, but it needs the festival to show distributors how an audience responds to this film. So, you know, last year, last year we showed the film, Vices Broke, and it got a great response from,

Marcus Mizelle (33:37)
That makes sense.

Thom Powers (33:47)
from the audience and ultimately MUBI picked it up ⁓ for distribution. And I think if it didn't have that festival platform and if it didn't have critics reacting to it ⁓ positively at the festival, it might have been harder for a distributor to make a move on it.

Marcus Mizelle (34:11)
There's so

much saturation, right? I mean, you need that light to be shown on you, I think, for a minute, or least some films. And then you get picked up or whatever happens that's supposed to happen happens. It's nice to be able to just, as opposed to just being floating out there in space with how many other movies that are being made a year.

Thom Powers (34:29)
Yeah, listen, I don't like to over mythologize the festival space as a place where your film is going to get bought. ⁓ It has always been a minority experience. these days, ⁓ there's some marketplace forces that make it even more difficult. ⁓ But it does still happen. And it...

Marcus Mizelle (34:34)
I appreciate that.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Thom Powers (34:58)
still is a much more advantageous position than trying to bring your film to buyers without any kind of context to show them that, yeah, that this film has audience support and critical support.

Marcus Mizelle (35:10)
I'd agree.

Yeah,

runtime wise.

Thom Powers (35:18)
I'd say 70 to 90 minutes is the sweet spot.

Marcus Mizelle (35:25)
Does that, it helps to program it better too. mean, theoretically or what is that? mean, it's, it helps to kind of fit more into a space or why would it be good? Also, it's like a shorter, I love shorter films personally.

Thom Powers (35:34)
Well,

yeah, I I think to kind of feel substantive enough for a feature film, you kind of need to be at least 70 minutes long or, you know, it feels like it doesn't have quite the depth to what the people are expecting. ⁓ I think, you know,

Marcus Mizelle (35:54)
Yeah, it's like a long short kind of at that point.

Thom Powers (36:00)
anything over 90 minutes you are testing the patience of an audience and you know and some Yeah, yeah, it better be real good. I mean, they're definitely films that I watch that are I you know, watched a film ⁓ This season that I ⁓ Hope will wind up at the Toronto Film Festival ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (36:08)
It better be real good, I bet.

Thom Powers (36:24)
The cut I saw was nearly two hours long and my reaction was, I could watch another hour of this. I find it so compelling.

Marcus Mizelle (36:30)
⁓ man, yeah.

I just want it to be as enjoyable as possible, as emotionally engaging as possible. It's almost like screw the runtime as a priority at least, you know. But anyways, thank you for indulging me.

Thom Powers (36:32)
built for speed. I like it.

Marcus Mizelle (36:45)
Um, you know, I'm just like every other filmmaker too. It's like, I don't, it's, it's always this kind of, uh, what's happening over there. Uh, you know, mentality where it's like, they, do they like it or who's seeing it or hopefully gotten the right hands and all this, which is what's so great about you, uh, doing this interview because this, uh, this conversation, because it just helps to get insights and it's very comforting to know just the realities of it, you know, and, to, and to not, cause people like to assume things. People get mad. I had my little phase 10 years ago where I was getting

Thom Powers (36:57)
Sure, yes.

Marcus Mizelle (37:15)
got rejected again. I'm mad. It's like, okay, then what? I don't have to be mad. Probably not personal at all. Let me just keep making movies. And then you start getting into festivals. ⁓

Thom Powers (37:25)
there's certain aspects of this life of being a filmmaker that are out of your control, like if you're gonna get a grant or if you're gonna get into a festival. ⁓ And it actually doesn't... ⁓ Well, I guess what I wanna say is, ⁓ people who are very advanced in their careers,

⁓ faced many of the same risks, know, I was with Mira Nair and ⁓

in India a few months ago as she was like waiting on a call to find out if she would get funding for her next film. mean, know, Mir and I are, you know, a queen of filmmaking. She should, you know, get all the money that she wants to do any project she wants. But, you know, the world ⁓ isn't built that way. ⁓ you know, right now in our process of selecting for Toronto, you know, I can count

Marcus Mizelle (38:20)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Sure, yeah.

Thom Powers (38:38)
you know, probably at least 10 filmmakers who have had films at the festival before. And, you know, and to, I'm not gonna have a place for this year because, you know, ultimately it's a very hard math. You're taking over 900 submissions and trying to make 25 slots and yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (38:56)
Sure.

Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy.

Thom Powers (39:03)
need a thick skin and a center. A way to keep yourself centered, yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (39:09)
You gotta keep going too, you know?

What is the future of documentary programming at festivals? Is it more the same or how do you see it evolve?

Thom Powers (39:19)
You know, I am not in the predicting the future business. have to say, I mean, I think there are, I think on the positive side is, you know, there's no shortage of films being made, even though the...

Marcus Mizelle (39:26)
Fair enough.

Thom Powers (39:45)
current commercial marketplace ⁓ is very forbidding right now ⁓ that has not stopped people from ⁓ making films. So I do not have a shortage of really interesting films to watch this summer and to program at TIFF this year. So that's great. ⁓ Some of the...

Marcus Mizelle (39:49)
Mm.

Thom Powers (40:12)
troubling ⁓ headwinds that we face. know, think theatrical exhibition ⁓ in general ⁓ has been struggling ⁓ since the pandemic. ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (40:16)
Mm-hmm.

Thom Powers (40:28)
you know, in my experience, the Doc NYC festival, you know, for instance, in New York City, the multiplex theater that ⁓ we used for many years closed down to be turned into ⁓ condominiums. That was ⁓ the Cineplex on ⁓ West 23rd Street. ⁓ So, know, so... ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (40:34)
Yeah.

Which one was that? The one-

That's where I watched Inglourious Bastards. Anyways, damn.

Thom Powers (40:59)
you know, we're in a shaky moment right now for movie theaters. ⁓ you know, and when I'm talking to friends who, you know, express their love for movie theaters, you know, the first question I ask is, like, how many times have you gone this year? ⁓ Because, you know,

Marcus Mizelle (41:05)
Hmm.

That's a real, yeah, yeah.

Thom Powers (41:21)
you either use it or lose it. And that is the situation we're in. There was a situation 20 years ago or so with independent bookstores and the rise of online book selling. Well, if you don't like that, how often are you going to your local bookstore and buying your books there instead of ordering them? I mean, you've...

Marcus Mizelle (41:39)
you

The market decides in a way,

Thom Powers (41:51)
These things cannot survive just on good wishes.

Marcus Mizelle (41:56)
Sure. What about the digital space? Like, what do you see a documentarian with their film? Where could they possibly go? Besides, you know, obviously if a movie took your film or a neon or one of the big boys, you know, or criterion or something like this, but like what, yeah, what would be, I don't know, like another space that we're not thinking about.

Thom Powers (42:07)
Yeah.

Well, mean, are

tricky times the streaming space had a very different mentality ⁓ five or six years ago. They had a mentality of we gotta grow, grow, grow, spend, spend, spend. ⁓ And then a few years ago, they ⁓ shifted course and suddenly they were being told.

by their investors and boards, you know, we've got to make money. And that is, you know, that's a different mentality and there's a kind of fear mentality and a scarcity mentality and lots of people have lost jobs. And that creates a circumstance where people in those executive positions are

really looking for sure things. ⁓ documentaries ⁓ for most of their history ⁓ have not been the sure thing commercially. ⁓ Certainly not the documentaries that ⁓ I love the most. Doesn't mean that they can't ⁓ have...

Marcus Mizelle (43:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Thom Powers (43:37)
an audience ⁓ that can earn enough money back to cover a reasonable budget. many of the streamers are using a different metric these days. And their metric is, we need something that will have a global audience in the tens of millions of... ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (43:43)
Yeah, but at least it costs less to make too, right? Maybe.

Keep their eyeballs on our

platform. Keep them on us.

Thom Powers (44:03)
of viewers.

know, when I, um, I mean, to go back to, uh, the film that I produced for HBO that you asked me about the start of this podcast, uh, Private Dixie Men Exposed in 1999, um, uh, that film had an audience, as I recall, of about a million viewers. And HBO was absolutely ecstatic.

that their documentary had an audience of a million viewers. At many streamers today, if you had an audience of a million viewers, you'd be considered a failure. that's a, so, you know, we need to somehow, you know, get back to...

⁓ world where a million viewers is considered the success that it is, and even a half million viewers. The contrast I always use is that for a non-fiction book on the New York Times bestseller list, ⁓ you can get on the New York Times bestseller list selling 15,000 copies. ⁓ And you're considered ⁓ success at

Marcus Mizelle (44:54)
sure.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Thom Powers (45:18)
publishing company, would be popping the corks on champagne bottles that their book got onto the New York Times Best Seller list. But you can do that by only selling 15,000 copies. ⁓ And we consider that a meaningful impact on the culture. And I believe it's a meaningful impact in the culture to have that kind of audience. Well.

Marcus Mizelle (45:23)
Sure.

versus what's the other end of it? Capitalism, straight up, you know, just like how much

money.

Thom Powers (45:45)
In the film world, ⁓ we do not consider ⁓ an audience of 15,000 to ⁓ be of ⁓ value. ⁓ So I think anyone who makes films understands the value of being in a screening room, even with 50 people, and ⁓ what happens when

when people, even 50 people respond to a film, like they take that with them. There are things that are probably invisible to us that happen. Sometimes there are things that are very visible. Sometimes those people go out and vote in a certain way or ⁓ create legislation.

Marcus Mizelle (46:27)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

And it's like, many people's

minds do you need to change before it's deemed a success, right? One is the answer, in my opinion. It's like, not that I want just one person on my screening, but still, it's like, even 50 people that never saw it, they could get touched. mean, that's something. That means something. And I was gonna, yeah.

Thom Powers (46:51)
So, in

my career I've seen a lot of meaningful interactions between audiences and films, somehow undervalued when the...

They're under-reported and instead what gets reported in the film presses, what did a film sell for, what was its box office? ⁓ And those things are worthwhile to track because ⁓ they do have significance to how much can, you budget you can get for your next film. ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (47:39)
Yeah, and it's a reflection of the market

value, right? People do get paid, what do you call it? They do speak with their pocketbook, I guess, right, in a way. Which this is a whole other larger conversation, but it's like even the society we're in, that's part of the conversation, right? As far as like what kind of movies does the larger whole like to watch?

Thom Powers (47:58)
but it's missing the very profound part of the experience.

Marcus Mizelle (48:02)
Got you, yeah. And you felt like it was there before, In the culture?

Thom Powers (48:07)
the movie business has always been driven by box office numbers, so I don't want to...

Marcus Mizelle (48:11)
Mm-hmm.

Thom Powers (48:15)
create like a false sense of nostalgia, think that the ⁓ kind of meaning that's created by films in front of an audience has always been under-reported. ⁓ I guess we need to find new ways to do that.

Marcus Mizelle (48:15)
in.

⁓

And yeah, and that's what I was gonna wrap it up with is, you know, what are some, how do we get it to the people? And you've already been doing that. You've been done doing that, right? You've created film festivals and you've been programming for the top festival in the world. And I'm trying to ask myself that question, you know? And we've been doing live, like this podcast is part of just at least some sort of like conversation and dialogue, but even like doing live events for that. I just wanna continue to find creative ways to... ⁓

not just make films, but to like share them, share other people's films with other people. know, like, I'm not trying to be a film festival programmer, like at the same time, curation is so ⁓ important and interesting to me, you know, because it is, ⁓ it's the linchpin.

Thom Powers (49:17)
Well, yeah, I mean,

for the past 20 years, I've always tried to, you know, create things where I felt they were needed. I mean, in a sense, Toronto is a highly visible job, but it's a little bit of an anomaly in the things that I do because it was... ⁓

It existed before I came along and I was lucky enough to get hired there. In other cases, my Strange and the Fiction series at IFC Center or ⁓ Doc NYC or...

the Montclair Film Festival or my podcast Pure Nonfiction or the WNYC Radio Segment Documentary of Week. Those were all things that I felt they were born of a little bit of my own frustration that something else didn't exist. In none of those cases was I doing it all by myself. It was always ⁓ in partnership with people who felt a similar frustration and... ⁓

And what I would encourage anyone listening to this, if you feel a frustration ⁓ that documentaries are not getting the audience that you wish they would have, ⁓ there's all kinds of things you can do on yourself. You don't have to wait for someone else to do it for you.

Marcus Mizelle (50:50)
Okay, what do you think? Just handful of things, what can we do? What can we do?

Thom Powers (50:54)
Listen, you can start with your social media outlets touting your favorite films. You can find ⁓ community space to show films, even if it's your own living room ⁓ inviting five other people to watch a movie. You can partner with existing ⁓ cinema spaces and...

Marcus Mizelle (51:07)
Mm-hmm.

Thom Powers (51:21)
you know, find out ways that you can use those spaces to bring in an audience that they didn't have. But, you you use the word community early on, and I really do think that is ⁓ the word to be anchored in, you know.

It's about creating community, it's about creating mailing lists and partnering with existing groups that have their own communities and trying to find the ways in which we can intersect.

Marcus Mizelle (51:57)
Last question, thank you for that. What is your favorite documentary of all time?

Thom Powers (52:04)
I mean, the documentary that really pulled me into doing this, like a North Star, is the film Hotel Terminus, The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie, by Marcel Ofels, who just passed away a few weeks ago in his 90s. So, you know.

The film isn't ⁓ an easy commitment. It's four hours long, although in the days of TV binging, ⁓ I'm sure many people have sat and watched longer ⁓ on their couch. ⁓ But it's an extremely worthwhile journey to take.

Marcus Mizelle (52:38)
Lord.

1988 Hotel Terminus documentary slash war four hours and 27 minutes long, but that's okay. Kloss Barbie, the infamous butcher of Leon was directly responsible for the deaths of thousands during World War II. But unlike many Nazi war criminals, Barbie was able to escape from Europe to South America after the war with help from American counterintelligence. This war winning documentary traces his life from childhood through 87. Cool. Thank you.

I'm just gonna say my favorite documentary is still Collective, that Romanian documentary. Do you ever see that? God, it's so good. I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. We can do it like this.

Thom Powers (53:23)
⁓ yeah, fantastic. Yeah, well, we should.