TIFF 2026: “Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney” is an Eye-Popping Political Fever Dream

By: Myles Herod –
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Matthew Rankin’s Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney operates like very few documentaries I’ve ever seen. In fairness, it’s actually more like a satirical genre-bending collage put to screen. Or as the Winnipeg director calls it: ‘Docufantasia’.

Running at 105 mins, it’s a portrait of Canada’s 18th Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s climb toward national prominence that doubles as a kaleidoscopic autopsy of the country’s television habits from more than 40 years ago. What starts off as six chapters of the man’s life quickly mutates into a delirious critique of every federal party that ever tried to charm the Canadian electorate. Director Rankin bombards the viewer with sensory overload: jittery montages, technicolour distortions, and audiovisual pranks that twist Mulroney’s public record into something resembling cosmic slapstick.

However, most impressive is his ability to compress half a century of Canadian political turbulence, weaving in Québec sovereignty debates and the parade of figures who drifted into Mulroney’s orbit delivered using all archival material. As editor, Rankin assembles a scrapbook of unmistakable Canadian quirks, title‑card oddities, blink‑and‑you’ll‑miss‑them cultural references (ie.Téléfrançais’ Ananas), all while juxtaposing conservative rival Joe Clark’s stumbles and Pierre Trudeau’s celebrity schmoozing.

Formally, the film behaves like a distinctly Canadian hallucation from a pre‑internet universe. It also revisits conservatism before the 1993 realignment, when Progressive Conservatives still championed public institutions and environmental safeguards, a far cry from today’s political climate. In the end, it also serves as the film’s greatest strength: a highly stylized time capsule of a subject not often profiled. Especially like this, with Mulroney himself emerging as a paradox: opportunistic yet oddly compelling, an outsider with a jaw described by one pundit as “walking like a man.”

Rankin’s singular style ensures the film lingers like a vivid fever dream. Proof that politics, on rare occasions, can still astonish.