The Toronto International Film Festival added Shane Salerno’s SALINGER to the lineup of films screening at this year’s festival. The documentary follows elusive author and literary legend J.D. Salinger, one of the most fascinating figures of the twentieth century, who brought the world The Catcher in the Rye. 

For more than 50 years, J.D. Salinger has been the subject of a relentless stream of newspaper and magazine articles as well as several biographies. Yet all of these attempts have been hampered by lack of access and the recycling of inaccurate information. Thus, Salinger has largely remained an enigma to the public and media alike.

During the nine years in which Salinger was in production, filmmaker Shane Salerno interviewed hundreds of people the world over, many of whom had previously declined to go on the record about their relationship with the iconic author. Salerno’s documentary offers direct eyewitness accounts from Salinger’s World War II brothers-in-arms, his family members, his close friends, his lovers, his classmates, his neighbours, his editors, his publishers, his New Yorker colleagues, and people with whom he had relationships that were unknown even to his own family. Providing unparalleled access to never-before-published photographs, diaries, letters, legal records, and documents, Salinger paints a definitive portrait.