Hillary and Chelsea Clinton at TIFF: "Being a woman is political"

Hillary Clinton is no stranger to film festivals. In 2020, the former secretary of state traveled to Sundance and Berlin to promote Hulu docuseries about her career. However, this year Clinton arrived at the Toronto International Film Festival with her daughter Chelsea in a very different capacity - as executive producers. The duo launched new film and TV company HiddenLight Productions in 2021, but the fruits of that labor only emerged this week.

Friday saw the premiere of the documentary "In Her Hands," a portrait of former Afghan mayor Zarifa Ghafari, which the company produced with Netflix. The film, co-directed by Afghan filmmaker Tamana Ayazi and Oscar nominee Marcel Mettelsiefen (“Watani: My Homeland”) screened the same day as the release of the unscripted AppleTV+ miniseries “Gutsy,” which features the two Clintons in conversation with other famous women. The connection between these two projects hints at the general direction of BrightLights as its executives make the rounds of TIFF.

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“Someone asked me if this movie was political,” Chelsea told IndieWire during a brief chat with her mother at the festival ahead of the premiere of “In Her Hands.” "Well, being a woman is political." The pair hadn't been in town long enough to see any more movies, but "we need a slate," Hillary said, adding that their team was looking for programming talent.

Co-founded with British producer Sam Branson, the Clintons' company differs from Higher Ground - the production company launched by Barack and Michelle Obama - in that it does not have an exclusive studio contract similar to the former. High Grounds look with Netflix. Instead, they explored a wide range of opportunities, including partnering on festival acquisitions. While they remain focused on non-fiction projects for now, the Clintons haven't ruled out the possibility of storylines. The Obamas recently took a break from their own documentary projects to produce an adaptation of Mohsin Hamid's novel "Exit West."

There has been some skepticism in the industry about recent content development efforts by high-profile public figures whose backgrounds don't produce, from the Obamas to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Archwell, but the The Clintons' first production seems to lean on their brand. "In Her Hands" merges the former Clinton's experience in foreign policy with her women-focused agenda.

Although Hillary struggled to find an end to the war in Afghanistan during her tenure in the Obama administration, she spent a lot of time in the country and was therefore drawn to the mayor's story Ghafari, 26 years old.

"It's a captivating but sometimes difficult story to watch," she said. “I had the great privilege and challenge as Secretary of State to travel to Afghanistan many times, and I fell in love with the people of this country, especially the women and girls who were able to go to school and practice their profession - and as in Zarifa's case, enter politics, enter government, contribute as the active and involved citizens that they were."