Montreal documentarian Stacey Tenenbaum doesn’t think like most other filmmakers. She is among the most unpredictable and diversified doc makers anywhere. She is also among the most fascinating and entertaining.

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Her four previous docs veered well off the beaten track, transporting viewers to places we had never contemplated visiting: exploring the lives of shoeshiners around the globe in Shiners; capturing the zeal of competitive pipe organists in Pipe Dreams; embarking on a round-the-planet odyssey in Scrap, taking in the metal graveyards where trains, planes and automobiles often go to die; and travelling along the gritty pro wrestling circuit in The Death Tour, following an event taking place every winter over the last 50 years throughout remote Indigenous communities in the frozen tundra of northern Manitoba.

Viewers would naturally have every reason to expect something a little surreal and otherworldly from Tenenbaum for her latest. But she throws us for a loop once again. Yet she does deliver the same passion in Tough Old Broads, which, despite the title, is very much heart-driven. This is Tenenbaum’s inspiring salute to three groundbreaking women who made their mark when they were young and who continue to blaze trails into their 70s. No quit in this bunch.

The film makes its Montreal debut at Cinéma du Parc on Thursday in advance of International Women’s Day on Sunday. Following the screening, Tenenbaum will engage in a Q&A with the audience.

Tenenbaum’s subjects stand out significantly in their fields: Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run officially in the Boston Marathon in 1967 and who helped bring the women’s marathon to the 1984 Olympics; environmentalist Siila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit leader and Nobel Peace Prize nominee at the forefront of the climate-change crisis and the battle against toxic pollutants; and photographer/civil-rights activist Sharon Farmer, who began her career documenting Vietnam War protests and the Kent State student killings and later became the director of the White House Photography Office.

“I tend to go with my own interests in film, and women’s rights have always been one of my most pressing and long-term interests,” says Tenenbaum, who wrote and produced the film in addition to directing it.

“My goal was to find women not only in very diverse areas — in sports, civil rights and climate change — but who have had different life experiences along the way. Someone of colour, someone from an Indigenous community. So I ended up looking for specific types of women and ended up with this blockbuster trio.”

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Tenenbaum was also motivated by her own personal experiences.

“Becoming older, working in a film industry that is not always open to people of older age, particularly women. It’s become a young person’s game, behind the camera and especially in front of the camera — particularly in front of the camera for women, and for older women even more,” explains Tenenbaum, a youthful 56.

People still tend to think of the film world in far more glam terms.

“We work long, 14-hour days on our feet,” she says. “It’s a gruelling business.”

Not to mention the hours, months, even years trying to get financing for films, particularly documentaries, and after completion trying to get film and TV distribution.

It’s worth noting that Tenenbaum began Tough Old Broads six years ago — in the midst of making other docs.

Given her sense of quirkiness, it could come as no surprise that Tenenbaum emerged with the documentary’s title before she had even started shooting.

“I had been watching another documentary about street photographers and caught this amazing woman photographer, Jill Freedman. I went: ‘Wow. She’s a tough old broad.’ Then I’m thinking: What a great title for a film. So then I kind of went looking for these broads for a film.

“I started my production, but then COVID came and it made it very difficult to speak to little old ladies.”

Tenenbaum managed to get the film financed in 2023. She reached out to Switzer first.

“She agreed right away to be part of the film,” Tenenbaum says. “She is unbelievable. She ran the full Boston Marathon 50 years after her first one, and she is still running marathons today — at 79!”

Switzer recalls some frightening times in the doc at her first Boston Marathon, when she ran into a menacing male competitor who threatened her.

“What’s incredible is that the three women are still doing what they did when they started out. Sharon at 74 is still shooting powerful pictures and Siila, 72, is still at the forefront of the climate-change crisis.

“That’s what I want people to take away from the film: that change is possible. It just may take an incredibly long time and it doesn’t go in a straight line. The key to it all is being persistent.”

It’s also about endurance.

“(Switzer) actually did some medical testing to prove women have more endurance physically than men do. And these women also had endurance emotionally to persist in the causes they were pursuing. I didn’t want to alienate men here, and it must be pointed out they were able to break barriers because men helped. We do need male allies. But, no question, women are dogged!”

Tenenbaum is nothing if not dogged herself. Her next project is in keeping with past esoteric — bordering on obscure — pursuits: The Doppelganger Project.

“I’ll be following Montreal photographer François Brunelle, who for the last 25 years has been taking photos of people who look alike but are not related.”

Of course Tenenbaum will be undertaking this doc. Who else but?

“I’ve got tons of ideas. Financing is getting harder and harder. But I’m persistent.”

Tough Old Broads screens Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at Cinéma du Parc, 3575 Parc Ave., with French subtitles, under the title Dures à cuire. Director/writer/producer Stacey Tenenbaum and Siila Watt-Cloutier will participate in a Q&A following the screening.

bbrownstein@postmedia.com

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