When Sarah McLachlan first hatched the idea for the 1990s women-only Lilith Fair tour, concert promoters openly questioned whether female singer-songwriters could perform back to back on a traveling festival bill and sell enough tickets.

Or that radio DJs could play women artists one after the other and not have listeners tune to others stations. Director Ally Pankiws feature documentary Llilith Fair: Building a Mystery, set for a world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, recounts how and why McLachlan proved the concert promoters wrong with the power and potential of her all-women summer music festival. Lilith Fair over three summers with headliners like McLachlan, Tracey Chapman, Paula Cole, Jewel, Patti Smith, Erykah Badu and Missy Elliot earned the ticket sales and profitability to change forever how top-flight women artists were booked by promoters or played on rotation in radio.

Sarah always inherently understood her audiences and what they wanted, Pankiw said of McLachlan an immensely talented, yet early on unassuming singer-songwriter and her battle against industry-wide sexism.

And she did it from such an authentic place: I like listening to female artists. I like playing with them. I like collaborating with them. I like touring with them. I know my audiences like listening to me and other massive female artists at the same time. It just doesnt add up that they wouldnt like us to play a bill all together, the director adds of McLachlans motivation.

Lilith Fair set out to disrupt the music industry with an alternative model all-women fronted bills when female artists like the Indigo Girls, Bonnie Raitt, Liz Phair and Paula Cole were showing up on the Billboard charts. Women arent a fluke, says Foolish Games singer Jewel, who appears in the doc.

But telling concert promoters in a male-dominated industry their business doesnt really run like they think it does never earns praise. Especially if youre a woman. Lilith was no exception to a rule. It was very much in line to what happens when women sort of dare to enter into arenas and artistic endeavors that some people dont think are for them. Its a tale as old as time, Pankiw says.

A recurring theme in the Lilith Fair doc, set to bow on Canadas CBC on Sept. 17 and then Hulu and Disney+ stateside from Sept. 21 via doc partner ABC News Studios,is the withering mockery and abuse the all-female concert tour earned from the media, including radio shock jocks and late night talk show hosts, and all under the guise of comedy.

Thats on top of skepticism shown by music industry execs preferring to sell records by women artists with sex and festival organizers relying on tours with flashy male artists. That left women artists who had taken pains with their lyrics and performances to feel trivialized and marginalized as their careers had just got off the ground.

Suzanne Vega in the film recounts wanting people to see her face and the artistry of her lyrics, but the pressure was on to be larger than life, she added after a Howard Stern Show appearance where the controversial shock jock questioned why she covered herself up with pants and a t-shirt top.

Pankiw hopes her film helps Lilith Fair be appreciated outside of its 1990s culture moment. After what she calls the misremembering of the all-women tour, including as Lesbopalooza and other comedic punch lines, Pankiew aims to restore the legacy of a summer festival led by McLachlan and other now legendary female artists to create a personal and authentic experience for their audiences.

They were just incredible women who knew their worth, who wanted their art and their artistry to be given its due, she explains. That got mostly ignored. Commercial success as Lilith Fair grew new album sales and earned Grammy nominations for its individual artists on tour only fueled unrelenting industry and media scorn.

Each Lilith Fair concert was preceded by a media conference where women artists, led by McLachlan, had to answer at times offensive questions. It probably wasnt weird that they would have to answer asinine questions. The 1990s was the era of shock jocks, the era of men being able to say the most disgusting, blatantly hateful things about women and gay people on some of the biggest platforms in entertainment, Pankiw remembers.

Other derision of Lilith Fair artists was more blatant. Paula Cole, who won the 1998 best new artist Grammy, was mocked by Jay Leno and others for performing on stage during the music industrys biggest night with unshaven armpits.

We did all this, but God, were still, were still here. Shit. Okay. We just gotta keep going, a frustrated McLachlan recounts in the documentary. Pankiw in her doc also recounts how Lilith Fair after its first year for its second and third summer festival runs added rap and RB artists like Missy Elliot, Neneh Cherry and Erykah Badu following criticism over a too-white event.

The Lilith Fair sound was also defined by the sing-along finale at the end of each concert, where McLachlan and fellow artists on the bill came on stage to sing together as a powerful symbol of unity. This is some of the biggest recording artists of our time all playing together on stage and they were having a blast, Pankiw recalls.

Of course, Lilith Fair came well before the era of podcasts and social media platforms fueling the current anti-feminist backlash during the second Trump administration. Its really interesting that the doc is coming out right now. We are in a weird pendulum, a back swing, Pankiw said after a recent past where point-of-view films and TV shows were made with women at the forefront, alongside queer and trans people and people of color.

It feels like no one wants to make those shows right now. It feels like a good time for the doc to come out with a little bit of a warning: dont make the same mistake, the director adds.

Dan Levys Not a Real Production Company and Elevation Pictures are co-producingLilith Fair: Building a Mystery,with interviews by McLachlan, Bonnie Raitt, Sheryl Crow, Erykah Badu, Natalie Merchant, Ma, Jewel, Indigo Girls, Emmylou Harris, Brandi Carlile and Olivia Rodrigo.

The film is also backed by McLachlans Lilith Fair co-founders Terry McBride, Dan Fraser and Marty Diamond, who also appear in the documentary.