True/False Wraps Profitable 2025 Competition, Recording 31,000 Admissions

True/False is celebrating a profitable 22^nd version of the all-documentary pageant in Columbia, MO. The occasion which wrapped on Sunday drew an attendance of greater than 31,000 to movie screenings and music showcases, in keeping with organizers.

“The 2025 version of True/False felt like a much-needed second of pleasure and togetherness for our group,” Creative Director Chloé Trayner tells Deadline. “We introduced collectively so many individuals to rejoice nonfiction storytelling, welcoming again outdated associates in addition to introducing new faces to the pageant and we couldn’t have hoped for a greater 12 months.”

Over the course of 4 days, the pageant hosted 30 function 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 large 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, dwelling movies, and press conferences,” True/False notes, “WTO/99 is a wholly archival movie chronicling this consequential four-day occasion.”

In an interview with Deadline that may air as a part of Deadline’s Doc Speak 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 turn out to be central to public debate within the Trump period.

“We enter ‘99 having been underneath the WTO for 4 years, and I believe 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 satisfy, 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 practice on the luge and bobsleigh observe that was initially constructed for the 1984 Olympic Winter Video games held within the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. Throughout the brutal civil conflict in Bosnia within the Nineties – a time when 100,000 Bosnians died by the hands of Serbian-aligned forces – the concrete luge observe 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.

True/False welcomed Sidhoo and considered one of his protagonists, luger Mirza Nikolajev, for a Q&A after the world premiere. Miraz received choked up as he described experiencing the movie, which was remodeled a interval of years.

“It’s wonderful actually simply watching just like the previous eight years of your life and… it’s a bit robust for me to speak in the intervening time,” Nikolajev stated. “Very emotional seeing every thing 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 all the time — I can present it to my associates and my future children, doubtlessly.”

“The Observe is, for me, sort of an ideal True/False movie as a result of I really like movies which are actually layered in that approach,” Trayner informed 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 sort of micro and macro layers for me is simply so thrilling to see as a result of you’ve gotten that actual sort of human reference to these unbelievable characters, however you’re additionally sort of getting this greater backdrop. And the themes of that movie I believe are extremely common, even when you 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 — a long time in the past — that documentary someway conveyed goal fact.

“I believe the concept of documentary as actuality is a lie, has been a lie for the reason that very starting,” Trayner noticed. “That is cinema, that is artwork… You’ll be able to by no means simply activate a digital camera and seize every thing. And even when you did, you continue to can’t categorical an individual’s total being in a 90-minute movie. You’ll be able to’t categorical a whole political scenario, nor do I believe it’s best to need to.”

Trayner added, “I believe fascinated about documentary rather more as a human expertise expression and a strategy to see the world and perceive the world, but additionally very consciously being conscious that each one movies are constructed, is admittedly thrilling and necessary 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 elementary concerning the pageant’s ethos.

“Ragtag could be very correct to each the spirit that the group began in and in addition how we proceed to work right now,” Trayner famous. “The pageant was began by a gaggle of people that have been all very all in favour of having a group 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 pageant 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 considered one of our different values, which is integrity, I believe actually summarizes how we deliver 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 seems 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 definitely come again the following 12 months and also you’re like, Ooh, what’s going to occur? It reinvents itself yearly.”