Mike Fleming

The Toronto International Film Festival unveiled part of its documentary films program this morning. Opening the proceedings is the world premiere gala screening of The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, the Thom Zimny-directed chronicle of Springsteen and the E Street Band’s making of the band’s fourth album, which was released in 1978. The Boss collaborated on the film, and his presence ought to create more of a rock star atmosphere than a documentary premiere usually provides.

There are 24 other documentaries booked so far. They include Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, the finished version of Alex Gibney’s documentary that was shown at the Tribeca Festival when it was an untitled work-in-progress; Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a Werner Herzog-directed docu that makes its world premiere and covers Herzog’s 3D chronicle inside the Chauvet caves of southern France, containing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind; Tabloid, a film by Errol Morris that  makes its world premiere and tells the story of a former Miss Wyoming and a quest for true love that led her to trek around the globe and become a tabloid newspaper fixture; and Inside Job, a look at the systemic failures that caused the financial crisis of 2008, directed by Charles Ferguson. That film makes its North American premiere.