Cavebirds (Canada, 81 minute.) Dir Emily Gan Programme: Canadian Spectrum (World Premiere) Montreal-based Emily Gan’s debut feature is a first-person essay film around an unusual subject: bird spit. To be more specific, the saliva of small swallow-like birds, which in hardened form is the prized ingredient in the Chinese traditional delicacy of bird’s nest soup.
Prey (Canada, 85 min) Dir. Matt Gallagher Programme: Canadian Spectrum (World Premiere) The subject of Prey is a civil lawsuit against the Basilian Fathers of Toronto, which took place last year, over their part in concealing and abetting William Hodgson “Hod” Marshall, a Catholic priest, high school teacher and serial sexual abuser, who died in 2014 at
Hot Docs 2019 [4369] [tara-hakim] Hakim, Tara _Beloved_ is a feast for the eyes and heart. {image_1} Beloved (Iran, 54 min.) Dir. Yaser Talebi Programme: World Showcase (Canadian Premiere) Beautifully filmed with an unlikely subject, Beloved is a feast for the eyes and heart. Directed and filmed by Yaser Talebi, the film follows Firouzrh Khordishi, an eighty-two-year-old
Our Dance of Revolution (Canada, 102 min.) Dir. Phillip Pike Programme: Canadian Spectrum (World Premier) At last, there is a documentary that does justice to the influential LGBTQ+ activists of colour who helped shape Toronto’s political landscape. Phillip Pike has gathered archival footage and some of the community’s best minds and most passionate advocates to tell
Conviction (Canada, 78 minutes) Dir. Nance Ackerman, Ariella Pahlke, Teresa MacInnes Programme: Canadian Spectrum A film about Canadian women prisoners made over a couple of years, Conviction is a touchingly personal view of inmate life, if somewhat scattered in its focus. The project involves three filmmakers who, we are told in an early title card, went into
A Place of Tide and Time (Canada, 78 min.) Dir. Sébastien Rist, Aude Leroux-Lévesque Programme: Canadian Spectrum (World Premiere) Audiences at Hot Docs 2016 should remember Sébastien Rist and Aude Leroux-Lévesque’s extraordinarily moving feature debut Living with Giants. The doc, which won a special jury prize from Hot Docs, transported audiences to Inukjuak, Quebec where the
When the five-minute concept was first embraced by cultural activists, its theory was simple: multiple performances of that length by diverse creators was guaranteed to keep an audience interested. And if you didn’t like something, the next act started before you knew it. Montreal’s Tangent Performance Gallery and later Toronto’s Women’s Cultural Building made it
The Wandering Chef (South Korea, 90 min.) Dir. Hye-Ryeong Park Programme: World Showcase (World Premiere) Korean celebrity chef Jiho Im has wandered around all his life. It started when he was twelve and ran away from home to wander the country and encounter its people. He’s been wandering ever since. “I wondered around a lot.
There are No Fakes (Canada, 114 min) Dir. Jamie Kastner Programme: Artscapes (World Premiere) Jamie Kastner’s engaging, smartly modulated, new documentary, There Are No Fakes, includes a 1962 CBC television clip of the then thirtyish Anishinaabe artist, Norval Morrisseau, being interviewed by glamorous young June Callwood, on the occasion of his first major gallery show at Toronto’s Pollock
The Rest (Germany, 78 min.) Dir. Ai Weiwei Programme: Special Presentations (North American Premiere) Ai Weiwei’s 2017 doc Human Flow is one of the most extraordinary portraits of the global migration crisis ever put on film. The globetrotting scale of the film captures the enormity of the problem at hand as Ai toured a whopping 23 countries