Oscar nomination ‘dream come true’ for TMU alum
Mike Munn says it was “an honour” to co-edit the Oscar-nominated film, To Kill a Tiger. (Toronto Metropolitan University/YouTube)
After eight months of editing footage for the Oscar-nominated film To Kill a Tiger, editor Mike Munn and Toronto director Nisha Pahuja realized they had a major challenge.
“There were two films on the timeline,” said Munn.
His job was to whittle it down to one.
Pahuja had spent four years filming in India. Her original goal was to tell an overarching story about the impact of masculinity and the country’s patriarchal system.
But as Munn sifted through about 1,000 hours of footage - one story stood out.
That of a farmer named Ranjit.
“He shared that his 13-year-old daughter had been gang raped, and he wanted to take the case to the court system, rather than go the kind of conventional, traditional way – in the rural area where they lived, usually the victim is forced to marry the rapist,” he said, adding that the father’s decision to disobey the conventional rule meant he and his family were ostracised from their village.
As Munn tried to weave Ranjit’s story through the rest of the footage, he felt it was being compromised.
“I remember saying to her (Pahuja), I’m not sure these can go together,” he said.
“I was trying my hardest to tell the story that she had initially intended. But one of the jobs of an editor is to also say, ‘What if we do this?’”
Pahuja agreed that Ranjit’s story was an important one. After careful consideration with industry peers, she shifted the entire focus of the film to Ranjit’s fight for justice for his daughter.
Today, the film is nominated for an Oscar.
“It’s a dream come true,” Munn said of the honour.
Several awards
The Academy Award nomination -- for the Best Feature Documentary -- is a cherry on top of the film’s seemingly endless list of prizes, including Best Canadian Feature at TIFF, and Best Documentary at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.
In addition, it won the 2023 Canadian Screen Awards for Best Feature Length Documentary and Best Editing in a Feature Documentary – in which Munn and co-editor David Kazala are named.
It was also just purchased by Netflix for world wide broadcast.
Not surprisingly, it’s also turning heads in India.
The film hasn’t been released there yet - but the making of the documentary alone sparked outrage – with some villagers invading Ranjit’s home during the filming, threatening the filmmakers and intimidating them into leaving.
“There are potentially all kinds of ramifications,” Munn said, noting that efforts have been made to protect the farmer and his family, and will continue to be made, especially when the film is released.
“It’s a big responsibility on Nisha’s part, I give her a lot of credit,” Munn said. “She always has Ranjit and his family top of mind.”
Road to Oscars began at TMU
For Munn, who grew up in Listowel, a small town near Stratford, Ont., and lives in Peterborough, the Oscar nomination is a climactic moment of a storied career that started at TMU in 1979.
“Out of all the film schools, TMU was the best practical school for film making. It had all of the best camera equipment, all of the sound equipment, it had a soundstage… There was a lab there where they could develop film right there in the same building,” he explained.
“It gave you really great hands-on experience because you weren’t just learning about it – you were doing it,” he continued.
As Munn progressed through the program (which today is Film Studies in the School of Image Arts in The Creative School), there was no doubt where his passion lied.
“By third and fourth year, I was editing other people's projects. They were more interested in the shooting or the sound, but I was fixated on editing,” he said.
Looking back at his childhood, it’s no surprise.
“I was a film nerd,” he laughed. “Whenever I had a history or English project, I'd always ask if I could make a Super Eight film instead.”
“I remember editing my little Super Eight films on my parents' ping pong table. So, funnily enough, I'm still doing now what I was doing when I was 12,” he said.
‘Do it as much as you can’
It was there at TMU that Munn’s industry network was born.
“You know, if you knew someone around the same level that you were at who was a director, you knew they’d need an editor, so you’d offer to help edit their film,” he said. “The more of that you did, the more your network grew, and the more projects would come along.”
It’s advice he continues to give film students today.
“One of the main things when you're starting out is to do it as much as you can,” he said, noting that every new project can help build a portfolio, and lead to another connection or project.
He also knows the industry can be tough.
“You have to make a living - that’s important. But if you're able to, as much as you can, if you can keep one hand in what it was that excited you to get into film in the first place, I think that that's important.”
Munn now has 18 scripted features and 19 documentaries under his belt - including Canadian director Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell.
His heart has always been in anything that lends creative freedom - which is one of the reasons why Pahuja’s project – a National Film Board and independently funded production – spoke to him.
“It’s the storytelling. It’s having an idea that exists in hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage and being responsible for, or co-responsible for, turning it into a compelling story.”
Helping make it an even more compelling story was the raw, authentic material he had to work with.
“To attain that level of intimacy with the family, Nisha really had to earn their trust. To be involved in something as authentic and intimate as this is a real honour. You feel almost as though you’ve been invited into their home,” he said.
Munn will be attending the Academy Awards event on Sunday, March 10 with Pahuja and other producers.
“I guess I need to get a tux,” he said with a laugh.
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