Two more documentaries are joining the Hot Docs line-up. The festival announced today that The Bones and Bread & Roses are the “Surprise Screenings” for this year’s event. The series is a new spotlight for docs revealed after the main slate.
The Bones, directed by Jeremy Xido and produced by Ina Fichman, takes audiences on a ride through the international dinosaur bones trade. Featuring insiders and archeologists, the film explores the unique market for the relatively limited (and increasingly rare) supply of dinosaur bones and fossils. Xido previously directed the 2012 documentary Death Metal Angola, while Fichman is at this year’s festival with Adrianne & the Castle.
Bread & Roses, meanwhile, comes from director/producer Sahra Mani and producers Justine Ciarrocchi and Jennifer Lawrence. The film marks Lawrence’s documentary debut as producer, while Mani was previously at Hot Docs with the feature A Thousand Girls Like Me (2018). Bread & Roses follows three women in Kabul, Afghanistan as they fight for their rights following the city’s fall to the Taliban in 2021. The film was recently announced for distribution with AppleTV+ with activist Malala Yousafzai boarding the film as executive producer.
The Bones will have its Canadian premiere at Hot Docs following a debut at CPH:DOX earlier this year. Bread & Roses premiered at Cannes last year in the Special Screenings section and makes its North American splash at Hot Docs. Both “Special Screenings” include filmmaker Q&As.
Hot Docs also announced today that it added additional screenings of festival selections Daughters, Union, Beethoven’s Nine: Ode to Humanity, The Click Trap, Grand Theft Hamlet, and Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story. Previous screenings to those docs have sold out ahead of the festival, which kicks of April 25.
