Fire of Love will open this year’s DOXA Documentary Festival. The Vancouver fest announced the first special presentations for its 2022 event, including the archival doc directed by Sara Dosa, which will touch down at Hot Docs before heading west. Fire of Love opened the U.S. documentary competition at Sundance in January and drew rave reviews for its portrait of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, who took their cameras to the edges of volcanoes in pursuit of knowledge. The film kicks off DOXA with a theatrical screening on Saturday, May 7.
DOXA’s Closing Night film is Doug and the Slugs and Me, directed by Teresa Alfeld. The film is a portrait of musician and East Vancouver icon Doug Bennett. Alfled draws upon her friendship with Bennett’s daughter for an intimate look at family dynamics and local celebrity. Alfeld previously opened DOXA’s 2018 festival with The Rankin File, which offered a bio of politician Harry Rankin.
Screening as the Special Presentation in DOXA’s Justice Forum is Love in the Time of Fentanyl, directed by Colin Askey and produced by Monika Navarro, Marc Serpa Francoeur, and Robinder Uppal. Love in the Time of Fentanyl is a frank look at the opioid crisis ripping through Vancouver seen largely through the eyes of harm reduction workers on the frontlines of the epidemic. The film takes audiences inside the Overdose Prevention Society for firsthand perspectives that find hope amid a crisis.
Dear Jackie, finally, brings a portrait of Jackie Robinson to the festival. The doc directed by Henri Pardo looks back at the days when Robinson broke the colour barrier in professional baseball by stepping onto the field with the Montreal Royals. The film, which screens as part of DOXA’s Rated Y for Youth program, engages audiences with pressing questions of race, representation, access, and opportunity that are just as relevant as they were in Robinson’s day.
Additional DOXA titles will be released leading up to the festival, which runs in person and online May 5 to 15.
