Films, at least those Hollywood has produced for over a century, often leave many people out of frame.
But as the industry comes under pressure to tell more diverse stories, many of the films debuting and showing at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival highlight heroes who are black, gay, Indigenous, or members of other underrepresented groups. In the process, many of these films take on pieces of forgotten history (“The Woman King” with its true story of an all-female warrior unit protecting a kingdom in West Africa), a faded past (“My Police Police”, a look at a closed-off homosexual forced into marriage for the sake of interest) and a rapidly changing present (“Bros,” rom-com featuring an entire LGBTQ crew).
These films are often deeply personal efforts. Take “The Inspection,” one of the festival’s opening evening films and the story of a gay man who enlists in the military during the “don’t ask, don’t tell” era. Director Elegance Bratton relied on his own service to craft the image and considered it an important correction.
“For most of our country’s history,” Bratton said, “we have been forced to silence and suffer in silence.” diverse. “This movie is 100% autobiographical, when it comes to fears, desires, and motives, but some of the situations are complex ones I’ve heard in podcasts and YouTube videos, [from] My friends who served and who achieved a really horrific result because they were shamefully laid off from being gay. So I not only tell their story, but say that a gay man served honorably and was accepted into the army with honor. I know a lot of people will go through that. So it fills me with so much joy.”
And there are plenty of other films to premiere this week and next that will give other groups a chance to see themselves on screen. There’s “Joyland,” the story of a Pakistani family grappling with their son’s decision to perform with a passing dancer. “This Place” by VT Nayani, a strange love story involving two women, one an Iranian and a Mohawk and the other a Tamil woman; and Sana Lathan’s debut feature, “On the Come Up,” a look at high school students navigating the world of combat rap music with a diverse cast.
On the face of it, “Bros” appears to be a traditionally made sweet “meeting sweet”. But in many respects it represents a drastic step forward. It’s the first major studio theatrical release to be co-written and star-studded as Billy Eichner’s openly gay man, and the story he chooses to tell has nothing to do with the AIDS crisis or homophobia. Instead, it is a celebration of sex.
“A lot of the LGBTQ content that we got in movies, especially movies that get a lot of attention and win awards, was about the struggle to be LGBTQ, the tragedy of that,” Eichner says. “All of these stories are very important to tell, and this is part of our history. But it has often been Just Stories we got. I’m just sitting there, “Can’t we be funny in a big gif? What about what is fun in our lives and what is exciting, uplifting and exciting? We need more LGBTQ movies like this, because it’s not torture.”
Despite the progress, Hollywood still has plenty of ground to make up. In 2020 (for the fourth year in a row), there have been no transgender or non-binary characters in major studio films, according to a recent GLAAD report. And while the number of movies featuring LGBTQ characters has increased in 2020, up 22.7% from 18.6% in 2019, the increase comes with a big caveat. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly reduced the amount of films being shown in theaters.
There has also been a slow growth in behind-the-camera roles for people of color, especially women of color, according to UCLA’s latest Hollywood Diversity Report, despite how significant color box office revenue is. Of the 252 best English-language films released in 2021, only 21.8% were directed by women and 30.2% by women directors of color. There is still room for optimism: In 2021, 43.1% of the cast in the top 252 films came from BIPOC backgrounds. This is a significant gain compared to a decade ago in 2011 when representation was 20.7%.
Giving people from underrepresented backgrounds the opportunity to tell their own stories is essential to subverting unoriginal stereotypes and metaphors, says H. Alberto, a transgender filmmaker who directed Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Coming of Age, which premiered Friday, is based on Benjamin Aller Sainz’s best-selling novel about two LGBTI young men in El Paso, Texas.
“I wanted to make a classic American movie that connected not only with us as Latinos, but with everyone else. And one that overturned expectations and metaphors we had seen before, which were often violent or lacked the credibility of my experience,” she says. “I don’t come from a very receptive family, but there has always been so much love. I really hope that translates to the fans.”
“A lot of the Latin representation in the film is too masculine or rooted in what people see in the 11 o’clock news, which isn’t our everyday realities,” says Lin-Manuel Miranda, a producer on “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.”
TIFF also provided an opportunity to take stock of how far the industry has come and the exciting creative avenues that can be unlocked when the industry funds more stories from underrepresented artists.
During an emotional question-and-answer session after the world premiere of “The Woman King,” movie star Viola Davis made an exciting pregnancy invitation.
“This movie is for the daredevils,” she said. “This movie is for people who might be naysayers – who never believed that black women, especially dark-skinned women, could lead the global box office. This movie is for black women who are out there, a channel, a way to shed a beautiful and wonderful light. I’m proud. Really want to be a part of that.”
Angelique Jackson contributed to this report.
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