In 2010, filmmaker Barry Avrich wrote, directed and produced Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project, a documentary about the micro-managing, hair-trigger tempered but ultimately genius Hollywood producer. Eight years later, Avrich returns to detail what he didn’t know then about the far darker side of the now-disgraced sexual predator. The Reckoning opens on a contrite Weinstein packing off to a rehab centre, mere moments before the tectonic plates of an industry would heave open both a cultural zeitgeist and a feminist revolution: the #MeToo movement. The film details not only the personal toll of Weinstein’s alleged pathology, but broadens the systemic scale of abuse to the ensuing scandals involving James Toback, Woody Allen and Louis C.K. Featuring interviews with insiders, alleged victims and whistleblowers, as well as divisive Canadian figures Marie Henein and Margaret Wente, Avrich brings controversial voices and undeterred women to the forefront in this unsettling look at one of the most explosive watersheds of sexual politics.
There will be an extended Q&A on April 28 with film subjects Lauren Sivan and Melissa Sagemiller, along with director Barry Avrich, co-producer Melissa Hood, editor Michèle Hozer and co-founder of #AfterMeToo Freya Ravensbergen.