{"id":894285,"date":"2026-09-13T14:14:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T14:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/894285\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T14:14:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T14:14:13","slug":"brian-mulroney-doc-to-premiere-in-tiffs-midnight-madness-section","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/894285\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian Mulroney Doc To Premiere In TIFF’s Midnight Madness Section"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCanada\u2019s prime minister, Mark Carney, attended the opening of the Toronto<\/a> Film Festival last year, helping introduce the documentary John Candy: I Like Me. This year, a former Canadian PM, Brian Mulroney, is appearing at TIFF<\/a>, in a manner of speaking.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Conservative Party politician, who served from 1984-1993, stars in Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney, the rare documentary to be programmed in the festival\u2019s Midnight Madness section. The outlandish tone suggests why it would be slotted in the midnight roster \u2013 the TIFF program describes Matthew Rankin<\/a>\u2019s film as \u201ca satirical collage of archival footage, television nostalgia, and national mythmaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne look at the key image will give a hint of what\u2019s to come \u2013 it shows Mulroney in an outfit and pancake makeup that looks like a collision of Liberace and Count Dracula.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn 1976, Brian Mulroney launched a charm offensive the likes of which Canada had never seen, dismantling the political establishment one dad joke at a time,\u201d notes a film synopsis. \u201cIn this psychedelic doomscroll through the mind of a master politician, filmmaker Matthew Rankin charts the flamboyant rise of Canada\u2019s 18th prime minister. From the backwoods of Baie-Comeau to the backrooms of power, Mulroney plots his ascent, trouncing his enemies with a smile and preparing Canada for the unlimited prosperity and permanent unity we live in today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"President<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tPresident Ronald Reagan and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in Ottawa, April 1987.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDirck Halstead\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tMulroney possessed a voice as deep as rumbling thunder and a jaw as wide as a dump truck. He came to power in Canada midway through the Reagan era south of the border, and there was a certain bonhomie between the two men who shared some ideological similarities (I went to college in Montreal while Mulroney was in office and distinctly remember seeing graffiti on a wall that suggested the artist\u2019s discomfort with the political alignment of the leaders. The one-word scrawl read: Mulronnie.).<\/p>\n

\n\tAlas, Mulroney (or Mulronnie, if you prefer) isn\u2019t around to see his name in lights at the festival. He died in 2024 at the age of 84 in Palm Beach, FL, where many Canadian snowbirds are known to migrate. (Ironically, that\u2019s also the Mar-a-Lago home of Donald Trump, a successor to Reagan who has declared a trade war on Canada).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Ladies<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNational Film Board of Canada<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFirst of all,\u201d Canadian filmmaker Matthew Rankin writes in a director\u2019s statement, \u201cI want to say that I think Brian Mulroney is completely amazing. This film is not the hagiography of blessed St-Brian-de-Baie-Comeau, but neither is it an ideological curb-stomping of the man. You can blame it on my Winnipeg upbringing perhaps, but I relate to the world through irony, and a skeptic has little to offer true believers. I am drawn to Mulroney because he was the prime minister when I was a kid and because of what he means as a cinematic phenomenon: I first understood him, as maybe most people did, as a character on television.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFrom the many thousands of hours of Mulroney-related news footage and propaganda I have sorted through emerges the full televisual force of an astoundingly charismatic and almost vengefully ambitious man, capable of being duplicitous and even ruthless (but hey, that\u2019s politics), uniquely able to dance so effortlessly between Canada\u2019s notoriously parochial two solitudes and, above all, an astonishing, brilliant political genius.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Director<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Matthew Rankin<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNational Film Board of Canada<\/p>\n

\n\tHe writes more. You can read it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tLadies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney is a production of the National Film Board of Canada. Rankin wrote, directed and edited the film. The producer is Pierre-Mathieu Fortin; executive producer is Pierre-Mathieu Fortin. Cinematography is by Alexandre Lampron; the original score is composed by Christophe Lamarche-Ledoux. <\/p>\n

\n\tLadies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney premieres Tuesday (Sept. 15) at Royal Alexandra Theatre at 12:59 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s prime minister, Mark Carney, attended the opening of the Toronto Film Festival last year, helping introduce the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":894286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,309776,309777,337,15896,3302],"class_list":["post-894285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-ladies-and-gentlemen-brian-mulroney","tag-matthew-rankin","tag-movies","tag-tiff","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}