Michael Moore was the talk of the Toronto global Film Festival Thursday night with the world premiere of his newest documentary, Where to Invade Next. These topics vary from something as light as the eight weeks of paid vacation that Italians enjoy or the gourmet lunches of the French school system, to more serious fare like Iceland progressively embracing of female leadership, Slovenia’s free college tuition, or Portugal’s decriminalization of drugs.
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Instead of highlighting what else has gone wrong with America since 2009’s Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore opts to focus on what European countries seem to be getting right.
The idea for the film, Moore told the audience in a Q&A following a standing ovation for the film, came from a trip across Europe with a friend when he was 19.
Subtlety has never been the specialty, or a necessary aim of documentarian Michael Moore, so the recent surprise announcement of his first feature in six years could have been read as indicative of a change in tactics. “I’ll buy the world!'” Moore said at a post-screening presser.
Indeed, what be most surprising about the film is how optimistic it is.
So, this awards season, will Moore’s latest, when it inevitably finds a distributor, go the way of Roger & Me (1989), his career-breakthrough that was shockingly snubbed by the Academy, or Bowling for Columbine (2002), which ended up earning him not only the first of his two Oscar noms (he subsequently was nominated for 2007’s Sicko), but his sole victory?
Made under a veil of secrecy-and, as some reviewers noted, with perhaps an intentionally misleading title-Where to Invade Next became known by its crew as “Mike’s Happy Movie”. The director said he was urged back into moviemaking after the Occupy Wall Street movement and the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri.
Though visibly moved by those events, Moore was still combative.
Demolition, the festival’s official opener, premiered earlier in the evening. But the movie is comic, and gleefully follows its protagonist’s unhinging as he refuses to mourn. “I think people thought Edward Snowden was coming on the stage or something”, the director joked.
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“I hope that by the end of the weekend we can announce here that millions of Americans are going to see this movie with a great distributor that’s going to make sure it will be seen all across the country”, said Moore.
