Dickie Pilager (Chris Cooper, far right), the son of a U.S. Senator and a candidate in the Colorado gubernatorial race, is surrounded by his aides (Richard Dreyfuss (left), Billy Zane) in the political drama Silver City.

The job that brings actor Stuart Townsend to Toronto is to promote his starring role opposite glamorous actresses Charlize Theron and Pénelope Cruz in director John Duigan's sprawling period romance Head in the Clouds (the film is currently playing in select cities and opens in Cincinnati later this month). The beautiful Theron is a no-show due to an injury on her current movie, which means Townsend, her male co-star, has to handle many of the publicity duties solo.

Yet it's American politics that dominate our late afternoon conversation midway through the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival.

Townsend's John Lennon-like face is familiar to moviegoers after appearing in a handful of art-house releases like Shooting Fish and About Adam, and he has much to discuss regarding his Head in the Clouds role. He plays Guy, an idealistic man caught up fighting against Franco's fascists in the Spanish Civil War and later leading resistance fighters against the Nazis in war-torn Paris.

Laidback on a hotel room sofa, Townsend says he's more interested in the political here and now. He's repeatedly watched all the key political documentaries and is following the U.S. presidential campaign with the fervor of a sports fan.

He sums up the campaign between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry like this: "This is a critical point in American history. This vote is so important. It's of great importance for the entire world."

So Townsend is putting his political activism where his mouth is. Head in the Clouds is a likable enough film, but he'd rather talk about something closer to his political heart and interests.

He's recently finished a script about the World Trade Organization riots in Seattle a few years ago and plans to direct the film. Between promotional work on Head in the Clouds in Toronto, Townsend is in meetings to secure funding for his directing debut.

Considering all the focus on the U.S. election and the summertime success of political documentaries like Control Room and Fahrenheit 9/11, Townsend's timing looks dead on. He's convinced that it's time for film dramas to address the current political turmoil.

Currently in theaters is director George T. Butler's new documentary Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry, an adaptation of his 1971 book about Vietnam vets, The New Soldier, and the latest film to impact the presidential election. While political ads challenge Kerry on his long-ago protests and activism against the Vietnam War, the film offers a passionate and eloquent response.

Going Upriver is just as specific and clear in its political aims as Michael Moore's anti-Bush polemic Fahrenheit 9/11. But instead of criticizing Bush, Butler wants to celebrate Kerry's Vietnam War service, when he captained a "swift boat" through heavy fire and returned home with distinction.

Butler's focus is on Kerry's patriotic activism after his tour of duty in Vietnam, leading the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the growing soldiers' peace movement.

So far, audience response to Going Upriver has been mild, a shadow of the success of Fahrenheit 9/11. Yet in a close election, when every vote matters, Butler's film could make a difference at the voting booth.

The financial success of Fahrenheit 9/11 has generated extra attention for what appears to be a string of new hot-topic dramas such as The Assassination of Richard Nixon, starring Sean Penn as a struggling everyman out to kill the president, or filmmaker John Sayles' Silver City, which is inspired by Bush's successful 1994 campaign for Texas governor.

Silver City, currently playing theaters nationwide and scheduled to open in Cincinnati in late October, addresses politics, media and the struggles of the American voter. Chris Cooper is Dickie Pilager, a candidate for governor of Colorado and a corporate puppet void of speaking skills. Danny Huston is an investigator out to find the truth behind Pilager's support.

Speaking recently at the Toronto Film Festival, Sayles says he made Silver City long before the success of Fahrenheit 9/11 and the idea that political films make money.

"This is not a studio movie," Sayles says, sitting in a quiet hotel room. "This was made independent of Hollywood. People talk about the liberal media, but Hollywood is more conservative than liberal. The lifestyles of the people who work there might be liberal, but the business is conservative. Remember, Hollywood has given us Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger."

Yet Sayles is clear about his personal desire to finish Silver City and see it in theaters before the November election. Asked if he agrees that Hollywood has avoided making movies that address current politics, he laughs.

Sayles admits that Jonathan Demme's recent update of John Frankenheimer's 1962 political thriller The Manchurian Candidate includes a plot involving corporations in control of the White House, a plot that hints specifically at the current White House and its ties with Haliburton. He hasn't watched The Bourne Supremacy, starring Matt Damon as CIA assassin turned rogue agent Jason Bourne, but agrees that perhaps it syncs with 9/11 Commission charges of corruption, mismanagement and scandals within the U.S. intelligence community.

"How long has it been since David Russell's Three Kings or Barry Levinson's Wag the Dog?" Sayles asks. "Hollywood isn't interested, and it wasn't any better in the past."

Asked about Medium Cool, the 1969 Paramount film about a TV news cameraman (Robert Forster) caught up in the riots outside Chicago's tumultuous Democratic Convention, Sayles laughs before answering.

"Remember, Medium Cool was pulled by Paramount at the request of the White House one week after it opened in theaters," he says. "Haskell Wexler (the film's director) tried to buy back the film, but the studio wouldn't sell. It was out of circulation for years."

Sayles' point, what he's always said with his film work and his opinions, is that political stories require independence from certain forces -- whether entertainment conglomerates, the banks that fund them or the politicians who support them -- and the financial wherewithal to make it on your own.

"Silver City was made with our own money, our own team of players," he says. "It was made possible thanks to their generosity and their willingness to work for little."

Working for little money in order to tell a story that's important or in order to support a cause -- that's something you'll never hear during a development meeting for the latest action franchise movie.

And yet, if the public seems interested in political documentaries or dramas -- as they appear to this year -- there will always be filmmakers ready to deliver the goods. ©