One of my favorite things about making Someone Else’s Movie is the lack of control. The guest picks the movie, and whether it’s one that I love, one that I hate or one I have to scramble to see, I have to roll with it. The show can be radically different from one week to the next; today, for instance, we pivot from an experimental masterwork of Black horror cinema to a studio-backed high-school comedy — chosen by a Canadian documentarian.

The documentarian is Christy Garland, whose excellent What Walaa Wants screens in Toronto tomorrow night at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema before opening at the TIFF Bell Lightbox March 1st as part of its Canada’s Top Ten screenings.

And the film is Election, Alexander Payne’s acidic comedy about a civics teacher (Matthew Broderick) bent on destroying the hopes of an overachieving student (Reese Witherspoon) running for student-body president. Released twenty years ago this spring, it was, shall we say, distressingly prescient about a lot of things. We get into that.

You should join us Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher, or download the episode directly from the web. And maybe have a cupcake after. You’ve earned it.