Documentary fans in Toronto looking to keep their festival experiences going throughout the season are ready for another serving of Doc Soup. The popular subscription series returns to Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema this week for another season. The series kicks off with Hanging By a Wire, director Mohammed Ali Naqvi’s docu-thriller about the 2023 mission to rescue a group of travellers, including six students, who were trapped in a broken cable car left dangling 900 feet in the air in Battagram, Pakistan. The film was submitted last week by Pakistan in the Oscar race for Best International Feature.
Doc Soup programmer Gabor Pertic says that audiences who may have heard of the story when it made headlines are in for a treat. “I thought there was such interesting content about it, but it was only through little news clips and bits of interviews that you would see this story,” Pertic tells POV. “But this film really showcases just exactly what happened. The drone footage is fascinating.”
Hanging By a Wire features gripping material shot from high in the air as drones provide reconnaissance efforts to learn about the conditions of the cable car while capturing images of the students balancing their weight to avoid tipping the gondola. Views from the ground show families in suspense, while the eyes in the sky, along with some re-enactments, provide glimpses of rescue efforts by military and civilian crews alike.
“It’s genuinely an absolute thriller of a film,” adds Pertic. “And if you’ve heard of the story, you’ll still learn so much. If you haven’t, you are in for a ride.”
Hanging By a Wire also reminds Doc Soup audiences of the power of seeing a film on the big screen. Its vertigo-inspiring adventure is tailor made for Hot Docs’ 17-foot screen, which sits at an elevation from the main floor to afford views from the balcony.
“In the way that our cinema is lined up, so many people will be looking up on that big screen and seeing that dangling cable car,” says Pertic. “They’ll be sucked into it and have that surround sound. There’s something really compelling about it seeing it on the big screen.”
Pertic, who spent several years programming the long-running series prior to being named the lead programmer for Hot Docs’ festival last year, says Doc Soup offers a chance for audiences to experience hits from the circuit like Hanging By a Wire in an environment similar to a festival, but perhaps without the same pace where they’re taking in multiple docs per day. “It’s a massive sense of community,” he observes. “It’s a lot of people that I have known over a decade that I still see coming in and that is their regular motivation because it’s a communal effect. It brings the city together. Even when I’m finishing up a Q&A, there are people in the lobby who are talking to the filmmakers and I get to talk to the audience members and one-on-one. Those things really count.”
This week’s screening features a virtual Q&A with Naqvi, while Doc Soup attendees are free to keep the conversation running afterwards.
The series’ emphasis on one film per month also lets directors of the selected documentaries enjoy a little more attention than they might receive during the busy festival where screenings have to turn around quickly. “At Doc Soup, you get the focal point,” says Pertic, looking at the series from a filmmakers’ perspective. “You are the one film, as opposed to when we’re playing 20-25 films, your film might get lost. There’s going to be a packed audience guaranteed in our cinema and it gets to showcase them and nobody else.”
The series regularly includes film subjects at the events to echo the festival experience. Pertic cites the example of Doc Soup’s 2014 hit The Last Man on the Moon, which brought astronaut Gene Cernan to the cinema to share his experience about taking that final step in space. “We had an emotional Q&A with this legend who got to tell his story,” says Pertic. “I was just in awe of it and it was such an emotional experience for everyone sitting there who remembered those moon launches.” He remembers there was even a full moon for audiences as they left the theatre to cap it all off.
The regular audience also provides a feedback loop that helps guide the programming choices. Pertic notes previous season opener The Librarians—about book banning and the fight for free speech—as a subscriber favourite. “That was something that I knew was going to deliver for so many reasons. It made for such a perfect Doc Soup film because, over the years that I have programmed it, this is the kind of crowd that would react to it,” says Pertic. “It made for such an engaging film to the point where we showed it again in the cinema.”
Pertic notes that the feedback from Doc Soup audiences often leads to encore screenings at the cinema during its regular programming. For example, March’s Doc Soup selection The Theft, directed by Hot Docs’ Canadian programmer Aisha Jamal, screens again at the theatre on October 18.
After Hanging By a Wire, Doc Soup continues with Nuisance Bear from directors Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman. The film won the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at Sundance earlier this year. The screening marks a homecoming for the directors as Nuisance Bear begins its Canadian run after touring the international circuit.
“It’s a film that we have been wanting to showcase to our audiences in one way or another,” says Pertic. “The film’s gone through a lot of paths and we were really, really hoping that we could bring it to our Doc Soup audiences. It’s a lovely and incredibly deep film. It’s shot beautifully, and I guarantee there’s going to be so many debates on one side or the other about it.”
