True/False is celebrating a profitable 22nd version of the all-documentary competition in Columbia, MO. The occasion which wrapped on Sunday drew an attendance of greater than 31,000 to movie screenings and music showcases, in line with organizers.
“The 2025 version of True/False felt like a much-needed second of pleasure and togetherness for our neighborhood,” Inventive Director Chloé Trayner tells Deadline. “We introduced collectively so many individuals to have a good time nonfiction storytelling, welcoming again outdated pals in addition to introducing new faces to the competition and we couldn’t have hoped for a greater yr.”
Over the course of 4 days, the competition hosted 30 characteristic documentaries and 24 shorts, in addition to artwork installations and music performances. Among the many world premieres was WTO/99, a documentary directed by Ian Bell concerning the huge protests that erupted in Seattle in 1999 across the World Commerce Group assembly. “Crafted from a surprising array of newscaster broadcasts and outtakes, citizen journalist tapes, house movies, and press conferences,” True/False notes, “WTO/99 is a wholly archival movie chronicling this consequential four-day occasion.”
Protesters and police in ‘WTO/99’
True/False
In an interview with Deadline that can air as a part of Deadline’s Doc Discuss podcast this coming Tuesday, Bell and producer Alex Megaro mentioned that seminal second marking the emergence of a political motion in opposition to world commerce – a phenomenon that, a technology later, has grow to be central to public debate within the Trump period.
“We enter ‘99 having been beneath the WTO for 4 years, and I feel lots of people had began to see the way it was going to play out with extra jobs going abroad,” stated Bell, setting the scene for the documentary. “The labor unions noticed that this model of free commerce was beginning to threaten manufacturing and different labor markets within the States and the environmental motion understood that the WTO had the capability to undermine home legal guidelines that protected the environment. And so out of all of the locations the WTO selected to fulfill, they selected a spot [Seattle] that was extremely unionized and deeply energetic across the environmental motion.”
True/False additionally performed host to the world premiere of The Observe, directed by Ryan Sidhoo, a movie about younger Bosnian athletes who prepare on the luge and bobsleigh monitor that was initially constructed for the 1984 Olympic Winter Video games held within the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. Throughout the brutal civil warfare in Bosnia within the Nineteen Nineties – a time when 100,000 Bosnians died by the hands of Serbian-aligned forces – the concrete luge monitor served as a defensive barrier for Sarajevo. It stays pocked with bullet holes right now and solely saved in serviceable kind for athletes via the volunteer efforts of a devoted coach.
‘The Observe‘ director Ryan Sidhoo (left) with movie participant Mirza Nikolajev at True/False
Matthew Carey
True/False welcomed Sidhoo and one among his protagonists, luger Mirza Nikolajev, for a Q&A after the world premiere. Miraz acquired choked up as he described experiencing the movie, which was revamped a interval of years.
“It’s superb actually simply watching just like the previous eight years of your life and… it’s a bit powerful for me to speak for the time being,” Nikolajev stated. “Very emotional seeing all the pieces that’s occurred. That’s how we developed throughout our rising up.” He added praised for Sidhoo, saying, “He made it really feel like he wasn’t even there recording it. I’m very glad that he did that. So now we are able to cherish the reminiscence. We are able to have it at all times — I can present it to my pals and my future children, doubtlessly.”
The graffiti-covered concrete monitor of the Sarajevo luge-bobsleigh run on Mount Trebevic in Bosnia-Herzegovina
Christian Charisius/image alliance by way of Getty Pictures
“The Observe is, for me, type of an ideal True/False movie as a result of I like movies which might be actually layered in that approach,” Trayner instructed Deadline. “It’s exploring each this nation’s historical past, but additionally this very particular story of those three younger boys and their coach coaching in luge. And that type of micro and macro layers for me is simply so thrilling to see as a result of you’ve that actual type of human reference to these unimaginable characters, however you’re additionally type of getting this greater backdrop. And the themes of that movie I feel are extremely common, even for those who don’t know something about Bosnia going into it.”
At True/False, they readily acknowledge that documentary is a subjective artform, regardless of a notion — many years in the past — that documentary by some means conveyed goal reality.
“I feel the concept of documentary as actuality is a lie, has been a lie because the very starting,” Trayner noticed. “That is cinema, that is artwork… You possibly can by no means simply activate a digital camera and seize all the pieces. And even for those who did, you continue to can’t categorical an individual’s total being in a 90-minute movie. You possibly can’t categorical a whole political state of affairs, nor do I feel it is best to need to.”
Trayner added, “I feel serious about documentary rather more as a human expertise expression and a technique to see the world and perceive the world, but additionally very consciously being conscious that each one movies are constructed, is admittedly thrilling and essential to me for audiences to be extra embracing of that idea.”
True/False is a program of the nonprofit Ragtag Movie Society – a reputation that claims one thing basic concerning the competition’s ethos.
The Ragtag cafe and cinema venue in Columbia, MO
Matthew Carey
“Ragtag may be very correct to each the spirit that the group began in and likewise how we proceed to work right now,” Trayner famous. “The competition was began by a gaggle of people that had been all very inquisitive about having a neighborhood artwork house right here in Columbia, Missouri… At Ragtag Cinema [the nonprofit’s theater that operates year-round] we nonetheless have couches. We don’t have conventional cinema seating. Because the competition has gotten older, now we have professionalized and streamlined and developed as any group ought to. However at our coronary heart, our core worth remains to be very a lot playfulness. And pairing that with one among our different values, which is integrity, I feel actually summarizes how we convey the ragtag spirit nonetheless via now in 2025.”
Trayner continued, “It’s very a lot about pleasure and never about very sterile, managed conditions. True/False is one thing that appears like magic, prefer it shouldn’t exist. And but yearly all people comes collectively and creates this transformative expertise collectively for 4 days, after which it disappears, and it’s gone. And then you definately come again the subsequent yr and also you’re like, Ooh, what’s going to occur? It reinvents itself yearly.”
