Ally Pankiw Brings Back Lilith Fair
The team behind “Lilith Fair: Building A Mystery,” including Diane Sawyer, Ally Pankiw, Sarah McLachlan, and Dan Levy, at the film’s premiere during the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 13, 2025.
In June 1997, Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan released her single, “Building a Mystery,” referencing the facades we create to hide our insecurities, which actually hides our true beautiful, fucked up selves. Known for singing of personal pain, love, and loss, McLachlan consistently breaks the illusion of fantasy with lyrics pulling you back to the truths of reality. “Building a Mystery” would be part of her fourth studio album, Surfacing, and was the song that landed McLachlan at the top of Canada’s RPM 100 Hit Tracks with a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and, later, a Juno for Single of the Year.
These are impressive feats for the Halifax-born songstress—who was constantly told she would fail—yet these material recognitions are outshined by McLachlan’s creation of Lilith Fair, an all-women's music festival shaping the future of how female artists would be treated by record labels, radio stations, and others in the male-dominated industry. Up until the mid 90s, there was an unspoken policy against playing female musicians back to back on the radio—something McLachlan and her fellow performers Sheryl Crow, Tracy Chapman, The Indigo Girls, Fiona Apple, Jewel, and many others would defy with each show at Lilith Fair.
Touring an average of 40 shows a year from 1997 to 1999, Lilith Fair would also host performances from Paula Cole, Erykah Badu, Bonnie Raitt, Missy Elliot, Queen Latifah, The Dixie Chicks, The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde, N’Dea Davenport, and be the big break for upcoming artists like Mya, Christina Aguilera, Dido, India Arie, and Nelly Furtado. More importantly, these feminist icons would sing, dance, and play their instruments on stage together—the twang of Amy Ray’s banjo with Emily Saliers and Meredith Brooks on acoustic guitars, McLachlan, Jewel and Sarah Lee on maracas with everyone harmonizing “Closer to Fine.” You know the one: I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains. I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains, There's more than one answer to these questions.
Sarah McLachlan at the premiere of “Lilith Fair: Building A Mystery” during the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 13, 2025.
Critics called it a “pussy package” or “Vulva Palooza,” saying that tickets wouldn’t sell even if two women were on the bill. Yet McLachlan and her fellow femmes weren’t afraid to be overtly gay, feminist or angsty, and continuously disproved prejudices night after night with sold-out shows. Thousands of women, men, fans, families, feminists, and people who just wanted to hear good music covet their Lilith Fair experience since it was a space free from ego, free to feel your emotions and unapologetically love thy neighbour.
All this and more is captured in Ally Pankiw’s debut documentary, Lilith Fair: Building A Mystery, blending archival footage from festival performances with behind-the-stage content and new interviews with McLachlan and many of the talent and crew who helped make Lilith Fair a reality. “It’s an underdog story that any filmmaker would be salivating to make,” Pankiw tells POV Magazine. “And there are so many parallels between my experiences as a female film director and what the women were up against in the 90s. It’s a miracle that women were able to make anything, never mind something so successful and revolutionary.”
Pankiw is known for writing and directing on zany Canadian tv series’ like Eugene and Dan Levy’s Schitt’s Creek, Mae Martin’s Feel Good, and the Black Mirror episode, “Joan is Awful.” Her first feature was I Used to Be Funny (2023), starring Rachel Sennott’s character who copes with sexual harassment through stand-up comedy. Pankiw has a knack for embedding her morals and creative decisions into her work, but it didn’t necessarily come easy being a girl from Edmonton’s small-town suburbs. At 18, she moved across the country, completed a degree in broadcast journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University, and got her start directing “shitty” music videos for Arianna Grande, Iggy Azalea, Janelle Monáe, and the Arkells.
Director Ally Pankiw at the premiere of “Lilith Fair: Building A Mystery” during the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 13, 2025.
We all have to start somewhere, and much like McLachlan, Pankiw is carving space for herself and counterhegemonic themes that society needs to address. She captures this from the outset of Lilith Fair with a millennial TikToker wondering what many of us are thinking: “Does anyone else get a little bit sad that they never got to go to Lilith Fair?” Yes, I am sad I will never get to experience the soul-changing feminist empowerment of Lilith Fair, especially right now as governments and lobbying groups try to strip rights away from trans people. I’m not trans, nor do I need to be to understand the desire to live one’s true self—music like McLachlan’s and films like Pankiw’s show the freedom of identity.
Lilith Fair: Building A Mystery premiered at the 50th annual Toronto International Film Festival on September 13, 2025. You can now watch the full documentary on CBC Gem or CBC Docs YouTube.