Sometimes you get to see some great films at TIFF and with Mandella and 12 Years a Slave I definitely have but sometimes it’s the surprises that make the festival so much fun. Today I got that surprise in the documentary Finding Vivian Maier. We were the first public audience to see the film and it was unexpected, entertaining, stunning, fun, engrossing…. Well I could go on but needless to say I really enjoyed it and I can’t recommend it more. This film starts with Director discovering a box of several thousand film negatives at an estate auction in the hope of finding some historical photos of Chicago. Instead he uncovers part of what will turn out to be an enormous archive of photographs by a brilliant amateur photographer who had recently passed away having lived a reclusive life as a nanny and domestic worker. He sets out to collect and display her works but also to find out who she was, what motivated her, who knew her and why she was never discovered until his accidental find after she had passed away. The film documents the hunt for Vivian Maier as well as portraying her work. It is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen and the story is completely captivating. Read up on Vivian and look for her photography and definitely see this movie as soon as you possibly can.