In the tourist driven city of Luxor in Egypt, some marriages begin on the banks of the Nile where mature foreign women find love and companionship with local younger men. Though it isn’t quite what it seems to be. In My Mohamed is Different, director Ines Marzouk presents a candid, verité style film that follows
Set on the island of Madagascar, the experimental Zaho Zay is a hybrid documentary, drama and poetic reverie that defies paraphrase. Co-directed by French Malagasy filmmaker Maéva Ranaïvojaona, and Austrian filmmaker Georg Tiller, the film has a binary structure: One part is a document drawn from life on the island nation and the other is
Further proof that Canadian arts can learn a lot from their Australian counterparts can be seen in Firestarter – The Story of Bangarra. This striking dance doc is a portrait of the internationally acclaimed Bangarra Dance Theatre and the three brothers—David, Russell, and Stephen Page—who fuelled the company’s success. Moreover, it’s an invigorating study of
Six years ago, Danish band Lukas Graham took the world by storm with their hit song 7 Years. A soulful power ballad sung from the heart, “7 Years” drew upon the wisdom imparted to the band’s lead vocalist, Lukas Forchhammer, by his recently deceased father. The song became an international hit for its raw emotion
Perhaps one of the most challenging films at Hot Docs this year, but also among the most essential, Margaret Byrne’s Any Given Day masterfully interrogates the ways in which we treat mental health. The film shows us a five-year observation of three participants, all of whom are in a mental health court probation program in
For those of us who witnessed it live on TV, the image is indelible. 200-metre Olympic champion Tommie Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos stand on the podium, their fists raised in the black power salute as the U.S. national anthem plays. As protests raged in the United States after the assassination of Martin Luther
Hannah Berryman does far more service to Rockfield Studios than the cringe-worthy cheese of Bohemian Rhapsody did. Music fans can breathe a sigh of relief and celebrate the farm-turned- studio where Queen recorded its famous song. Rockfield: The Studio on the Farm is an appropriately fun and freewheeling portrait of the offbeat farm studio that
Jessica Beshir’s lyrical Faya Dayi and Daniel Kötter’s formalist Rift Finfinnee, two oddly similar films set in an Ethiopia struggling with the upheavals of urbanization and industrialization, are almost excellent movies. Both are a little overly enamoured of their very accomplished aesthetics, which at times render distant and abstract what might have been better served
For decades, Jason Sherman has been exploring the notion of what it means to uphold the expectations a good Jewish life. He uses his experience growing up in Canada to reflect upon the relationship between individuals and the very idea of what it means to support the notion of Israel despite the realpolitik challenges that
The entrance of Dee’s Tots, the 24-hour daycare captured in Through the Night, is plastered from floor to ceiling with photos of all the children that have walked through its doors. The collage of smiles over the shoulder of every drop-off and pick-up make it feel less like a daycare, and more like the biggest
