‘Whistle’ Review – A Group of Die-Hard Whistlers Fight For Best In Show In A Doc That’s Too Silly For Its Own Spittle [TIFF 2025]

Something shifted in documentary filmmaking around the time that Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine came on the scene with their 2020 hit Boys State, a shrewd portrait of microcosmic democracy at a Texas summer camp for the politically inclined that only faltered in its occasionally glib handling of its subjects. Energetic editing and musical cues have something to do with it, but too many of today’s nonfiction pictures operate as though they’re made by people so self-serious that they couldn’t possibly portray anyone else with a resoluteness worthy of themselves. If there’s a reason for this trend, one in dire need of a swift bucking, perhaps it’s the inherent absurdity of the topic at hand, whether it’s a renaissance fair’s succession crisis (Lance Oppenheim’s miniseries Ren Faire) or a three-part Netflix doc that explicitly warns against fucking with cats. Some examples even predate the works of the filmmakers behind Boys and Girls State are films about competitive tickling (2016’s Tickled) and fascination en masse with words like “racecar” and “wow” (2020’s Palindromists). Perhaps it would just be best (and easiest) to blame Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy for ever dreaming up Best in Show; at least then, we can all go home.

Even if Moss and McBaine fail to perfectly fit a very specific variant of the Oppenheimer meme – in which the father of the atomic bomb stands beside a pond on Princeton’s campus, silently and solemnly acknowledging his role in starting a “chain reaction that would destroy the world” – they come close enough, and their overt, optimistic portraits of folks on the outskirts seem to have inspired a wave of similar accounts. Enter Christopher Nelius’ Whistle, a documentary about whistlers – yes, whistlers, as in people who professionally purse their lips and recite popular tunes and/or improvised ditties in a sing-songy manner that only a robin could love. The film is hardly a few minutes old before its few primary subjects have delivered decrees from “I didn’t choose whistling. Whistling chose me,” to “I want everyone to know that there’s a whistler in the room, and that whistler has a vagina.” As far as nonfiction projects about peculiar skill sets go, few are bound to scrape the surface that Whistle achieves, and not solely because its thesis – that Whistlers are people, too – is not exactly a qualm the typical human finds themselves wrestling with on a Monday morning over their first cup of coffee. That doesn’t mean the result is particularly interesting, despite going to efforts few (if any) have gone before in depicting the art form as a labor of love.

Nelius’ main character, as it were, believes in such assertions so much that none of us really have to bother trusting in anything but her faith in the craft. Carole Anne Kaufman is the name, and organizing the world’s largest whistling competition is her game, financial insecurity be damned. She follows the rules of the performance hall she’s rented out for the bout, like not touching a piano housed within. (“That’s a $300 fee!” she exclaims when one of her few helpers gets too close.) She pours her blood, sweat, tears, and whistle-related spittle into the tournament, hoping that one day, it will achieve the status she and her competitors – whom she calls her family – believe their well-worn talent deserves. If her primary concern isn’t with the event itself, it’s with the snack counter, a lonely prayer that she fears holds underpriced goods, never mind the lack of customers it seems to attract.

The aforementioned reference to Best in Show is hardly just a throwaway: It’s evident from the jump that Nelius has the classic comedy top of mind here, and Kathryn Milliss’ camera seems to have a knack for highlighting Whistle’s silliest bits as though they were deliberately written into its script. (Repeatedly cutting to the unsold snacks makes for an undeniable hoot.) Not only are a few of its images indelible, but its cast of characters tends to make Catherine O’Hara’s dog mom look like a regular at your local Starbucks. Okay, perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but this delightful band of mighty mouths prescribes a life-or-death-adjacent significance to the trophies they may or may not walk away with at the comp’s close, a necessary narrative element for a film insistent on being too slapstickish for its own good. The competitors fear one another in one sense, but wholly respect their chosen family in another; Molly Lewis, a professional with both an album and a credit on the Barbie soundtrack to her name, and Yuki Takeda, the contest’s perpetual silver (and/or bronze) medalist, are especially charming subjects for a film chock full of them. Ayna Ziordia Botella, a Spanish whistler who specifically traveled to Hollywood for the event and quickly becomes an audience favorite, is bound to be your personal champion, too.

To spoil the winner of this year’s Masters of Musical Whistling tournament would spoil the primary fun that there is to be had with Whistle, though that’s just one more directorial crutch that Nelius is all too keen to lean on en route to making a film that isn’t entirely flat, but could have feasibly reached a higher register if not for the zany standards it saddles itself with at the onset. A documentary about a competition can be both reliant on the structure it is gifted by the championship at its center and the peculiar subjects that participate, but Nelius can’t seem to find the necessary balance to create something riveting, not repetitive. It’s a breeze, to be clear, but not one that is remotely as melodic as those created by the people in front of the camera.

Whistle held its World Premiere as part of the TIFF Docs section at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

Director: Christopher Nelius

Rated: NR

Runtime: 84m