113 documentaries will screen at this year’s Hot Docs. The festival announced the full line-up for its 2025 edition today with a slate emphasizing political engagement, diverse representation, and challenging stories.
This year’s festival will open with the NFB documentary Parade: Queer Acts of Love & Resistance. The film directed by Noam Gonick chronicles the history of LGBTQ+ activism in Canada from the fight for privacy in bedrooms to public displays of affection and equal rights, through to the AIDS epidemic, Black Lives Matter, and ongoing threats to transgender rights. The film is produced by Justine Pimlott, and caps off her strong run at the NFB, which includes fellow Hot Docs selection The Nest, announced previously. Parade features a number of notable queer voices among its talking heads, including filmmakers John Greyson and Richard Fung, filmmaker and former Hot Docs programmer Lynne Fernie, and POV contributor Susan G. Cole.
“I am incredibly excited to be able to share these 113 extraordinary films as part of the 32nd Hot Docs Festival,” said Hot Docs director of programming Heather Haynes in a statement. “Both the documentary landscape and the world of film festivals have been faced with new challenges and so much change over the past few years, and despite all of this, our community has found a way to keep moving forward. We’re honoured to be able to continue to share the powerful work and talent of filmmakers from Canada and around the world with Toronto’s dedicated film-loving audiences. Documentary filmmaking has always played a significant role in expanding on the stories shared in headlines, and in times such as this, when there is so much consistent change and uncertainty both here at home and globally, that expansion is perhaps needed now more than ever.”
Highlights in the Canadian Spectrum Competition include Shamed, directed by Matt Gallagher, which examines the troubling story of an online pseudo-journalist whose To Catch a Predator knock-off Creeper Hunter TV drew tragic consequences. Two Indigenous stories come in Siksikakowan: The Blackfoot Man, a stunningly cinematic consideration of masculinity among the Blackfoot First Nation, directed by Sinakson Trevor Solway, and #skoden, which offers a deep dive into the story of an unhoused Alberta man following the viral sensation of a meme. In Ghosts of the Sea, director Virginia Tangvald explores an unexpected connection between her brother, who disappeared at sea, and a famed Norwegian adventurer who died in a shipwreck. Meanwhile, in Casas Muertas, Rosana Matecki investigates the stories of families who remain in Venezuela under threats of violence and oppression.
Other Canadian features at the festival include Julien Elie’s environmental doc Shifting Baselines, Denis Côté’s character piece Paul, Amalie Atkin’s artistic portrait Agatha’s Almanac, Jane Hui Wang’s political retrospective The Gardener and the Dictator, and Jonah Malak’s Spare My Bones, Coyote! about migrants crossing the Mexican border. The festival also screens the Canadian premiere of animated lark Endless Cookie by brothers Pete Scrivner and Seth Scriver and Toronto premiere of the Haitian arts doc Koutkekout: At All Kost. Hot Docs also announced the return of the $50,000 Rogers Audience Award, which will honour the top Canadian feature as voted by the festival audience.
On the international front, Hot Docs will screen films such as Khartoum and Yalla Parkour in its Made in Exile programme. The series will spotlight stories by and about displaced persons. Made in Exile includes the world premiere of The Longer You Bleed, which observes Gen Z Ukrainians exiled in Berlin.
Notable names coming to Hot Docs include Oscar winning actress Marlee Matlin. The star who made history as the first Deaf actor to win an Oscar will appear in the Big Ideas series with Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore director Shoshannah Stern. Also appearing in the series featuring extended Q&As will be director Maxim Derevianko and special guests with the screening of Ai Weiwei’s Turandot, along with director James Jones and journalist Christo Grozev of Antidote and director Violet Du Feng of The Dating Game. Marlee Matlin, Antidote, and The Dating Game were among the 15 Special Presentations titles announced previously, along with acclaimed films such as Come See Me in the Good Light, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, and Coexistence, My Ass!.
Other new additions include Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize winner Cutting Through Rocks, directed by Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni. The film profiles Sara Shahverdi as she makes history as the first woman elected to public office in her remote Iranian town. Also screening is David Borenstein’s Sundance Special Prize winner Mr. Nobody Against Putin, about a Russian teacher who defies the ideological brainwashing methods of his school’s new curriculum.
New among the themed programming is Tipping Point, a series that offers docs featuring “hard-hitting accounts of some of today’s most pressing issues.” Titles include the NFB police brutality and community action doc Night Watches Us, directed by Stefan Verna. Returning are the girl power of Persister, the creative juices of Artscapes, and the midnight oddity of Nightvisions, and the global gaze of the World Showcase, while the Citizen Minutes series brings an anthology of human rights tales to the shorts programming.
This year’s festival marks a notably slimmed down iteration of Hot Docs following an avalanche of challenges in 2024.The changes include a pause to the marquee industry event, the Hot Docs Forum, but industry head Elizabeth Radshaw told attendees during the press conference that the festival would focus on its “works in progress” screening and pitch event this year. Moreover, the “first look” funders who previously awarded the prize money at the Forum will pivot to the works in progress screenings this year.
However, Hot Docs marked a turn in momentum last week with the announcement of TIFF veteran Diana Sanchez as the organization’s new executive director. This year’s festival runs from April 24 to May 4.
