Crowds queue for contentious Death of a President premiere at TIFF

Last Updated: Monday, September 11, 2006 | 10:39 AM ET

CBC Arts

A large and curious crowd, as well as a strong police presence, met the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Death of a President Sunday night but no protests materialized in response to the controversial film.

Writer-director Gabriel Range has received death threats and has been flamed online over the work, which depicts the fictional assassination of U.S. President George W. Bush by a sniper in Chicago in 2007 in a melee that results from a violent anti-war protest.

The fictional, dramatic film uses a documentary format. It shows former Secret Service agents, police officers, the suspects in the shooting and their families reflecting back on the event from a fictional future, outlining how the country became more divided and xenophobic in the aftermath.

Range said Death of a President wasn't meant to be a political attack on Bush, but to examine the long-term effects of Washington's so-called "war on terror" and Americans' willingness to give up their civil liberties in return for promises of security in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"It is using the lens of the future to look at the present," director Range told the audience after the premiere.

"It is about issues that have affected us all in the last five years. It is a film about America today."

Both supporters, detractors queue to see film

Many of those waiting in the long line on Sunday, in hopes of scoring a last-minute ticket, defended the movie. Among them was Sanjay Rajput, a visitor from Detroit who said he worries the film might never be screened in the U.S.

"I think that just harms all sides," he said. "You're really seeing a marginalization of artistic points of view that don't fit the mainstream."

Michelle Legge, a resident of Beamsville, Ont., was also queuing in hopes of seeing the film, even though she said she opposed it and was upset about the timing of the screening just prior to the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11.

"I don't know. It just gives me the creeps thinking about that," she said.

Festival co-director urges critics, public to watch film

However, TIFF co-director Noah Cowan said Sunday that people should see the film before they judge it.

"It actually deals not very much with the idea of killing anybody. It's actually about policies and their aftermaths," he told a crowd outside the premiere.

In TIFF materials issued this summer and in the program book, Death of a President was referred to as D.O.A.P. to keep the nature of the project quiet until closer to the screening.

Combines real footage, acting

Critics have attacked the film's combination of real documentary and news footage, including of the real-life Bush. For example, a publicity still that showed what appears to be Bush being shot has lit up blogs and provoked reaction around the world.

The image was actually shot using an actor, with Bush's face superimposed.

Range has previously used the technique of combining documentary footage and acted sequences into a fictional scenario in two projects for BBC2, both of them critiques of British political realities.

The Day Britain Stopped shows a complete failure of British transit systems after a simultaneous rail strike and plane crash. The Man Who Broke Britain posits a Britain in financial turmoil after oil prices peak and a shady trader loses millions for a major bank.