Deadline & DGA’s Art Of Directing At TIFF 2026 Panel
Bold decisions during filming, biggest challenges and first Directors Guild of America cards were among some of the topics we that came up during Deadline and the DGA‘s Art of Directing panel at the Toronto Film Festival that featured a conversation with Curry Barker, Siân Heder, Alex Gibney, Rachel Morrison and Bassam Tariq.
Check out the panel conversation here and scroll down for more photos from the event.
Barker was at TIFF for the one-year anniversary of Obsession, which world premiered a year ago, was picked up by Focus Features, and grossed more than $500,000 at the global box office. He revealed to us that one of the most stressful moments on his latest Focus Features/Blumhouse Atomic Monster production Anything But Ghosts, which co-stars Aaron Paul, was that “we had a 130-page script and we had 26 days to shoot it. I’m also starring in it and directing and I’m the lead character. I have more lines than anyone in the movie.”
“Zach Kregger just told me, ‘You have to cut 30 pages’ and I probably should have listened to him. So, did my manager; he told me that, too,” shared Barker during the conversation at the Bisha Hotel. “But I didn’t cut a single page because I wanted to shoot all of it. And the hardest day on Obsession was the easiest day on Anything But Ghosts.“
As is apparent in the social media barbs he’s taking from SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Gibney’s biggest problem while shooting his new documentary Musk was that “Nobody wanted to talk to me, either because they were terrified and the central subject didn’t want to talk to me. In fact, as I asked [Musk] for an interview, he responded with a tweet. And the tweet was ‘Gibney is a douche.’ To which I responded ‘Douché.’”
How did he get around some of these problems?
“We collected everything that he had ever said, either on audio or video, and we production designed an avatar for the main interview where we had two angles: one looking direct to camera, one off to the side. Then as we edited the film and got it down to length, we then animated the character that we had created and it became the avatar.”
Still, even if Gibney had landed Musk for an interview, the director observed, “He keeps repeating the same lines over and over and over again. So I’m not sure I would have gotten a revolutionary interview or something that would have been truth-seeking. But it certainly would have been interesting and I would have enjoyed it.”
Tariq was in Toronto with his Mahershala Ali-starring Orion action movie Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, about an American Muslim hitman who goes to war with a mentor godfather-type in his mosque in addition to a vicious far-right David Koresh type played by John Cho. The filmmaker shared that a production schedule of 30 days with five action set pieces was the ultimate uphill. That, in addition to adhering to filmmaking advice from his late editor-mentor Jonathan Oppenheim, which was, “In the first five minutes of the film, you tell the audience how to watch the movie.”
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother debuts in cinemas on September 25.
Morrison on her Prime Video romantic drama Love of Your Life starring Margaret Qualley, Aaron Pierre, Gabriel Basso and Patrick Schwarzenegger, said that “My line producer would say that the greatest challenge was shooting in three countries, four cities, different states, which doesn’t happen anymore at the studio level. There’s a real tendency to pick a tax incentive state, shoot some plates and everything against green screen. I really wanted to shoot things on the ground.” The pic which streams on Oct. 14 was shot in London, Portugal, New Orleans and Boston.
For CODA Oscar winner Heder and her new Apple movie Being Heumann, about disability-rights activist Judy Heumann who led 100 disabled people to storm a federal building in 1977, it was “trying to create an accessible set, which was a crazy journey because it hadn’t been done before.”
Bassam Tariq, Curry Barker and Sian Heder at the Deadline & DGA TIFF Panel & Reception held at Bisha Hotel on September 12, 2026 in Toronto, Canada.
Lauren Asensoi for Deadline
Rachel Morrison and Bassam Tariq at the Deadline & DGA TIFF Panel & Reception held at Bisha Hotel on September 12, 2026 in Toronto, Canada.
Lauren Asensoi for Deadline
Anthony D’Alessandro, Rachel Morrison, Bassam Tariq, Curry Barker, Sian Heder and Alex Gibney at the Deadline & DGA TIFF Panel & Reception held at Bisha Hotel on September 12, 2026 in Toronto, Canada.
Lauren Asensoi for Deadline
Anthony D’Alessandro, Rachel Morrison, Bassam Tariq, Curry Barker, Sian Heder and Alex Gibney at the Deadline & DGA TIFF Panel & Reception held at Bisha Hotel on September 12, 2026 in Toronto, Canada.
Lauren Asensoi for Deadline
Jennifer Peat at the Deadline & DGA TIFF Panel & Reception held at Bisha Hotel on September 12, 2026 in Toronto, Canada.
Lauren Asensoi for Deadline
The audience at the Deadline & DGA TIFF Panel & Reception held at Bisha Hotel on September 12, 2026 in Toronto, Canada.
Lauren Asensoi for Deadline
Atmosphere at the Deadline & DGA TIFF Panel & Reception held at Bisha Hotel on September 12, 2026 in Toronto, Canada.
Lauren Asensoi for Deadline
The audience at the Deadline & DGA TIFF Panel & Reception held at Bisha Hotel on September 12, 2026 in Toronto, Canada.
Lauren Asensoi for Deadline
Atmosphere at the Deadline & DGA TIFF Panel & Reception held at Bisha Hotel on September 12, 2026 in Toronto, Canada.
Lauren Asensoi for Deadline
Atmosphere at the Deadline & DGA TIFF Panel & Reception held at Bisha Hotel on September 12, 2026 in Toronto, Canada.
Lauren Asensoi for Deadline
Atmosphere at the Deadline & DGA TIFF Panel & Reception held at Bisha Hotel on September 12, 2026 in Toronto, Canada.
Lauren Asensoi for Deadline
The movie stars 12 disabled leads and 60 disabled background actors.
“We had to build our trailers from scratch. We had to build a hair and makeup trailer from scratch. We created like Ramp Villages, and from beginning to end, it was just there was no map for how to build an accessibility team and take care of people’s bodies while you’re making a movie.”
“It’s cool that now there’s these trailers,” said Heder about making strides for the community.
“There was one accessible trailer in all of North America; because [a production] never expects more than one wheelchair user to ever be working at the same time.”
Being Heumann has a one-week play in cinemas on November 6 before hitting Apple TV on November 13.
