EXCLUSIVE: The Toronto Film Festival is stacked with music-themed documentaries this year – films on the Pretenders and Chrissie Hynde, Thai pop star/actress Lisa, singer Darlene Love, and the alt-country band Chaparelle among them.

The documentary Gail, which holds its world premiere at TIFF on Saturday, focuses not so much on the Canadian band Our Lady Peace itself, but on its undisputed no. 1 fan, Gail Lichtman, a subway station agent from the Bronx. She’s been following the group for decades.

Michael Maxxis directed the film, which is programmed in the TIFF Docs section. Jason Reitman executive produces alongside Jason Blumenfeld and Our Lady Peace. We have your exclusive first look at the film in the teaser-trailer below.

“For more than thirty years, Bronx subway worker Gail E Lichtman has devoted nearly every spare dollar and vacation day to following the Canadian rock band Our Lady Peace, attending more than 150 concerts around the world,” notes a synopsis. “When the band embarks on an anniversary tour across Canada in the dead of winter, Gail sets out after them by bus, train, and ferry. Through the comedy, exhaustion, and unexpected tensions of the road, her eccentric devotion gradually reveals an intimate portrait of loneliness, joy, and the universal search for purpose, belonging, and hope. Funny, tender, and deeply human, Gail celebrates the extraordinary meaning that can be found in an ordinary life.”

“This film has a kind of whimsical quality about it that when you see it, it makes sense the connection to Jason Reitman,” TIFF documentary programmer Thom Powers told Deadline when the festival lineup was announced.

Gail is produced by Morgan Gold, Michael Maxxis, Shane Reid, Natalie Allan, Our Lady Peace’s Raine Maida, Jason Murray, and Duncan Coutt.

Maida, singer and principal songwriter of Our Lady Peace, comments, “For 27 years I’ve watched Gail show up. 130 Our Lady Peace shows, 25 of my solo shows, VIP after VIP. Always the last person to wait in the cold by the tour bus after the show. A humble but complicated NYC transit worker who has somehow found her way into the front row again and again.

“As we prepared to launch the OLP 30 Tour, our manager Jason Murray, bassist Duncan Coutts, and myself found ourselves together at a Toronto Maple Leafs game discussing how to document this milestone. The obvious choice was another rock documentary. Unable to stomach that cliche, an idea hit me – What if we turned the camera around? Instead of asking what it’s like to spend thirty years in a band, we ask what it’s like to spend thirty years believing in one. To have Gail tell our story.”

Maida continues, “Through her eyes, I could finally ask the questions I’d been carrying for decades. Who was this fiercely loyal, deeply opinionated, endlessly resilient woman from Yonkers who had quietly become part of the fabric of our lives?”

Maida sought out Michael Maxxis to helm the project.

“I have always been fascinated by people, especially those whose lives unfold in the margins,” Maxxis observes. “At a concert, the artist is illuminated while the audience disappears into a mass of silhouettes. This was an opportunity to turn the lights around and explore the life of someone who had spent decades looking toward the stage. What was happening inside one of those silhouettes? Where did she come from? What did she return to when the concert ended? How deep could we go? Those questions were far more interesting to me than making a conventional film about a successful band.”

Gail is a production of Marching Orb and Charlie Boy Films. Music is by Our Lady Peace and Eric Rosse; the score is composed by Lesley Barber. Cole Grom edited the film; the director of photography is Morgan Gold.

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