UNCLENCHING THE FISTS Q&A | TIFF 2021

The team behind UNCLENCHING THE FISTS in conversation with TIFF in advance of its premiere at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival. In an industrial town in the North Caucasus, a middle child struggles to escape the stifling grip of the family she both loves and rejects. The 46th Toronto International Film Festival runs September 9 to 18, 2021. For more, visit . Nestled in the Caucasus Mountains, in the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, Mizur is a desolate industrial town where Ada (Milana Aguzarova) is the second of three siblings. Their well-meaning but overprotective single father, Zaur (Alik Karaev), uprooted the family from the neighbouring town of Beslan after the 2004 school siege, where over 1,100 citizens were taken hostage by Chechen terrorists demanding Russia’s withdrawal from Chechnya and more than 330 hostages were killed — over half of them children. Just as President Vladimir Putin manipulated those horrific acts to further expand his power on a national sc