Every film festival with a robust documentary section will have its share of WTF movies, but “The Contestant” could well be the WTF-iest at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Premiering on Friday in the TIFF Docs section, director Clair Titley’s film starts with a ridiculous but true premise and piles on more and more ridiculousness until the whole thing makes no sense at all. Except that it happened.
Your jaw may drop, your head may shake and you may well end up hating at least one character, but it’s hard to take your eyes off the damn thing — and especially hard to take your eyes off Tomoaki Hamatsu, aka Nasubi, the poor guy at the center of it.