TORONTO

“DO not get out of the car!” the private security guard barked at the driver from the back seat of a black van carrying Michael Moore and five striking workers from the United Steelworkers union (Local 6500). The event was the screening of Mr. Moore’s latest film, “Capitalism: A Love Story” at the Toronto International Film Festival and, as with most premieres, the sidewalk was packed with people waiting for the limousine doors to open.

But as the driver pulled the van close enough to the curb to clip the shoulder of a Toronto policeman holding back the surging crowd, it became evident that this crowd wanted more than autographs. There were picketers, homemade protest signs and people dressed as 19th-century robber barons. Even the miners, whom Mr. Moore invited to bring attention to their bitter two-month strike against the mining giant Vale Inco in Sudbury, Ontario, looked wide-eyed at the spectacle last Sunday.

“Uh, oh,” Mr. Moore said, looking out the front-seat passenger window. “They’ve got pitchforks.”

Mr. Moore, a veteran of political action and perhaps the most successful documentary filmmaker in history, had little reason to worry. Getting out of the van, he waded into the crowd and greeted the protesters, whose pitchforks were directed at the bankers and bureaucrats behind last year’s huge Wall Street bailout. He then entered the Elgin Theater and introduced the miners (wearing their full work gear) to the news media, the warm mood broken only slightly when a reporter from “Entertainment Tonight” asked sarcastically whether Mr. Moore had arrived in a Cadillac.

“I don’t notice,” he said, asking if anyone knew the make.

“Jeez, I think it was a Ford,” one of the miners said, squinting into the paparazzi flashes that lighted up his face.