Sarah Polley photographed at the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto before the opening of her film Women Talking in Nov. 2022.Melissa Tait/The Globe and Mail
As the 51st Toronto International Film Festival takes over the city Sept. 10-20, this series of articles examines some of the Canadian directors whose lives and careers have been shaped by TIFF.
In 2006, a debut film by a 27-year-old Canadian director was the talk of TIFF.
Liz Braun, now a semi-retired arts journalist, was one of a group of Canadian entertainment writers who saw Sarah Polley’s Away from Her before the world descended on Toronto. The film was about a long-married couple grappling with Alzheimer’s disease.
“Everybody was talking about it,” remembers Braun. “People were very happy and excited that it was good. It was exhilarating.”
Polley had grown up in front of the Canadian media. Coming to fame as a child actor in Road to Avonlea, she was also well-known for her ardent teenage activism. Braun, for her part, can’t remember if she first heard about Polley for a role or for getting her “teeth knocked out at a demonstration,” a reference to the time Polley was struck by riot police at a protest against Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government in 1995. Polley’s breakout in adult film was a starring role in Atom Egoyan’s 1997 film The Sweet Hereafter, her second project with the Canadian director.
As Braun tells it, Polley and TIFF grew up together. As one became an Oscar-winning writer and director who’s made four internationally acclaimed features so far, the other blossomed from a scrappy local festival to one of the premier stops on the global film circuit.
“One of the things that TIFF is responsible for, in a really big way, is bringing the world’s attention to Canadian film and filmmakers,” Braun says. “Twenty years ago, when Sarah released Away from Her, we were just ready. There was so much respect and affection for her going in. People could not wait to see that film.” Away from Her ended up winning seven Genie Awards.
Two decades into her filmmaking career, Polley has kept her hometown and its festival close. She still lives in Toronto with her young family and has premiered several films at TIFF. In 2022, the festival marked the release of Polley’s Women Talking by asking her to select and talk about some of her favourite films.
Anita Lee, chief programming officer at TIFF, first came across Polley’s work as a filmmaker through her 2001 short, I Shout Love, which went on to win the Genie for Best Live Action Short Drama.
“I thought the script was strong, but what blew me away were the performances,” says Lee. Kristen Thomson, the female lead, won an ACTRA Award for her role in the short.
Lee suspects that Polley’s talent for drawing great performances from actors might stem from her formative years as an actor on set, watching some of the world’s best directors at work.
“I imagine, as an actor, you intuitively learn very quickly what works well and does not work well when you’re on the other side of the camera,” says Lee. “That kind of life experience has made her an incredibly strong director in understanding the kind of environment and approach that is needed to really bring out these kinds of stellar performances.”
Lee says another thing that connects Polley’s work is her intentionality about centring women’s stories. Examples include her adaptations of Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace for TV and Miriam Toews’ Women Talking, which won Polley an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Braun likens Polley to Gordon Lightfoot: Both are internationally acclaimed, distinctly Canadian artists who spurned bigger, brighter lights to build lower-key lives at home.
“That capacity to hide in plain sight gives you a life. Your observational ability remains intact,” Braun says. “It’s crucial to a creative person to get to look around. As soon as you’re insulated and isolated, that has to affect your work.”
For her part, Lee has spent significant time working alongside Polley, especially during the four years she spent as producer for Stories We Tell, Polley’s 2012 documentary that revealed some shocking secrets in her family history.
“In this industry, you’re often in many hats. There’s a real pressure to role-play or adapt to what the business is asking you to be,” says Lee. “What’s distinctive about Sarah is that she is always unapologetically herself. She’s very authentic, and she shows up very consistently.”
That extends to Polley’s commitment to her family, adds Lee. She remembers celebrating Polley’s birthday on the red carpet for Stories We Tell, with Polley’s husband and newborn baby in tow. “It’s just incredible to me that she has continued to do the kind of work she does, and she is a very hands-on, full-time mother of three children.”
At 47, Polley may just be getting started: Right now, she’s working on a star-studded adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
“When you say the top five directors in Canada, Sarah’s already in that top five at such a young age,” says Lee. “I think there are still so many great films she’s going to make.”
Courtesy of Mongrel Media
A scene that mattered: Away from Her, 2006
Braun says there’s always “a kind of emotional layering” in Polley’s films, both within the storytelling and in the technical way she composes different shots. “There’s a real depth to what you’re looking at.”
One favourite example of this occurs during Away from Her, which stars Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent as the central couple, Fiona and Grant. Braun remembers being struck by a particular shot from late in the film. Fiona, whose Alzheimer’s has progressed, is living in a care facility and Grant, who is visiting, still struggles to come to terms with it.
“It’s shot through the doors of an elevator, and it has the central characters in this painterly tableau that was phenomenally affecting,” Braun says. “I asked [Polley] about this, and she laughed and said, ‘Thank God you mentioned that, because everyone was leaning on me to take that shot out.’”