Pick of the Litter (USA, 79 min.) Dir. Dana Nachman, Don Hardy Programme: Special Presentations (International Premiere) Call it puppy love. It’s impossible to resist the sheer volume of adorableness packed into Pick of the Litter. This crowd-pleasing and doggone adorable doc by Dana Nachman and Don Hardy introduces audiences to five extremely cute
More Human than Human (Netherlands, USA, Belgium, 79 min.) Dir: Tommy Pallotta, Femke Wolting Programme: Special Presentations. (International Premiere) Tommy Pallotta, a Richard Linklater collaborator who worked on Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, and co-director Femke Wolting open their doc about artificial intelligence with montages of robots like monstrous Gort in The Day
For those of us who love documentaries, and even for those who only enjoy them occasionally, this weekend offers a rare treat. It’s the closing weekend of the Hot Docs festival, which is a great time to see films. The excitement of the first days of the festival is gone and the premieres have all
The Reckoning: Hollywood’s Worst Kept Secret (Canada, 90 min.) Dir. Barry Avrich Programme: Special Presentations (World Premiere) The impact of the Silence Breakers is everywhere at Hot Docs this year. It’s a full programme devoted to women speaking against systemic misogyny. Women’s voices are at the forefront of the festival. People are listening and
The American Meme (USA, 94 min.) Dir. Bert Marcus Programme: Nitghtvision (International Premiere) OMG! Paris Hilton is actually smart. The celebrity socialite, reality TV star, and entrepreneur is the biggest surprise of Bert Marcus’s plugged-in documentary The American Meme. Hilton serves as the chief talking head in this survey of social media “influencers” that
Chef Flynn (USA, 83 min.) Dir. Cameron Yates Programme: Special Presentations (Canadian Premiere) If tennis was the competitive pop-up theme for TIFF17, chefs are it for Hot Docs 2018. Eight women chefs put on The Heat for the festival’s opening night film by Toronto director Maya Gallus. Another “hot doc” in the burgeoning fine
Harvest Moon (Canada, 70 min.) Dir. Zaheed Mawani Programme: Canadian Spectrum (North American Premiere) Slow cinema nuts are in for a treat with Harvest Moon. This observational film demands and rewards patience. Harvest Moon offers a methodical and contemplative portrait of a family of walnut farmers in the forests of Kyrgyzstan. It reflects on
What Walaa Wants (Canada/Denmark, 89 min.) Dir. Christy Garland Canadian Spectrum (North American Premiere) On the surface What Walaa Wants is a film about a young girl who wants to join the Palestinian Authority; however, it manages to explore a lot more than that. Walaa is a strong-willed impassioned teenager living in Balata, a
Golden Dawn Girls (Norway, Denmark, Finland, 92 minutes) Dir: Håvard Bustnes Programme: World Showcase. (North American Premiere) Once on a tiny Aegean island called Koufonissi, an Athenian friend said to me, “There are no ghosts in Greece. There is too much light.” She was wrong. The warm, sweet Greece that I’ve loved barely makes
Serge Giguère crafts a love letter to mothers who devote themselves to their children with My Mother's Letters