Raise Your Arms and Twist, Documentary of NMB48 (Japan, 95 min.) Dir. Atsushi Funahashi Programme: Made in Japan (Toronto Premiere) Atsushi Funahashi’s film Raise Your Arms and Twist explores the pop culture phenomenon of Japanese teen idols: singing and dancing young girls with huge, enthusiastic followings. The girls strive for status within their own
The Lives of Thérèse (Les Vies de Thérèse) (France, 55 min.) Dir. Sébastien Lifshitz Programme: Singular Sensation(s) (Toronto Premiere) How does one depict real death on screen? Filming the final days of Thérèse Clerc, a French feminist and LGBT activist, director Sébastien Lifshitz helps his subject tackle two taboos: aging and dying. Les vies
The notion that an Indigenous spelling bee competition could serve as the cohesive force to unite disparate First Nations children across Canada under one nation, as the title of Hot Docs’s 2017 opening film suggests, is perhaps the most obvious of all the liberal consensus threads.
The next time you walk down Gerrard Street, take note of the bright sparkly motorcycle parked on the south side of the street just opposite Allan Gardens. The bike marks the spot for Paddy Alridge’s speciality boutique Take a Walk on the Wild Side, which creates a safe and easygoing space for the cross-dressing men of
Sunday Beauty Queen (Hong Kong, Philippines, Japan. 95 minutes) Dir: Baby Ruth Villarama Programme: World Showcase (Canadian Premiere) On Sundays in Hong Kong, many Filipino domestic workers enjoy preparing and staging beauty pageants. What initially seems like a quirky subculture turns out to be a more substantial subject in Sunday Beauty Queen, a big-hearted
The Challenge (France/Italy 70 minutes) Dir Yuri Ancarini Programme: Magnificent Obsessions (Canadian Premiere) Decadence has rarely looked as gorgeous as it does in The Challenge, Italian video artist and filmmaker Yuri Ancarini’s film, which is nominally about a falconry contest among the super-wealthy sheikhs in the world’s wealthiest per capita country, Quatar. Though the
About My Liberty (Japan, 165 minutes) Dir. Takahashi Nishihara) By Liam Lacey In 2015 and 2016, Japan witnessed the biggest student protest movement since the 1960s. The cause was a bill by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party that would allow Japan, for the first time since the country’s surrender in 1945, to
Maison du Bonheur (Canada, 64 min.) Dir. Sofia Bohdanowicz Programme: World Showcase (North American Premiere) Taking a trip to Paris, director Sofia Bohdanowicz visits with Juliane Sellam, the grandmother of a colleague, for her second feature film Maison du Bonheur. Sellam, a 77-year old astrologer who has lived in her lovely Montmartre home for
Gilbert (USA, 96 min.) Dir. Neil Berkeley Programme: Special Presentations (International Premiere) Gilbert Gottfried has been compared to Lenny Bruce because like Lenny, he is a taboo-breaking, absurdity puncturing stand-up comic, whose most outrageous gags have landed him in deep shit. There was the 9/11 joke that prompted someone in the audience at a
69 Minutes of 86 Days (Norway, 71 minutes) Dir: Egil Håskjold Larsen Programme: International Spectrum. (North American Premiere) The most emblematic photograph of the Syrian war to date was that of the corpse of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, drowned on the Mediterranean beach in September 2015, after his refugee family’s third attempt to reach the