Festivals: Hot Docs Reviews
Hot Docs 2023 Review: ANGEL APPLICANT Reveals the Art of Survival
Ken A. Meyer directed, created an emotionally engaging, culturally relevant, and socially influential double portrait of artist Paul Klee and himself, dealing with the same disease.
Hot Docs 2022 Review: GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE, Lovely Contemplation on Nature, Filmmaking, Human Existence
Jacquelyn Mills' documentary is one of the loveliest feature debuts in years.
Hot Docs 2021 Review: MAU Designs Rules For Life
Watching the Bergman Brothers' wide-reaching, yet fleet documentary, Mau, on the life and career of Canadian super-star architect and designer Bruce Mau, I could not help but think of the final scene of Shaolin Soccer. After having won the big...
Hot Docs 2021 Review: WUHAN WUHAN Is An Engaging Display Of Empathy
Yung Chang's quietly effective documentary Wuhan Wuhan is both a time travelling machine and an empathy machine. Straddling the cinematic line between Frederick Wiseman and Robert Altman, high praise that is both obvious and merited, Chang's film takes us back to February...
Hot Docs 2020 Review: THE WALRUS AND THE WHISTLEBLOWER, Attachment and Amusement
I doubt there is any Ontarian of a certain age who couldn't sing you the jingle for Marineland. The commercial was in regular rotation when I was growing up in Toronto: images of whales, walrus, deer, and other wildlife and...
Hot Docs 2019 Review: HONEYLAND Intertwines Humanity and Mother Earth in a Melancholy, Universal Story
We first meet Haditze walking precariously cliff-side to harvest a wild colony of bees. With the sun gorgeously settling in on the valley, she makes her way back to the isolated homestead she keeps with her infirm octogenarian mother. It...
Hot Docs 2019 Review: COLD CASE HAMMARSKJÖLD Is Hella-Good Storytelling
"This could either be the world's biggest murder mystery, or the world's most idiotic conspiracy theory." Two years before the JFK assassination, on the 18th of September 1961, the world was shocked by the suspicious death of the second serving...
Hot Docs 2018 Review: THE RUSSIAN JOB Makes You Laugh on the Inside
How is this for an elevator pitch: What if Roy Andersson directed Roger & Me? No pitch is necessary, because a collaboration between a Czech journalist, Petr Horký, and freelance photographer (and regular contributor to the New York Times) Milan...
Hot Docs 2018 Review: CERES Connects Children to the Land
With so much of the worlds population living in cities, where all the food comes from the grocery store, or some variant of urban market, immediate, highly proximate documentaries such as Janet Van den Bran's Ceres are essential. She follows...
Hot Docs 2018 Review: TUNGRUS, 15 Minutes of Tragicomic Absurdity
"If anybody wants to adopt a rooster, do your research, and as with all pets, be prepared for life to become hell." Tungrus examines the perils of pet ownership in a middle-class Mumbai flat, when a family adopts a 2...
Hot Docs 2018 Review: SHIRKERS, Weaponized Narcissism
Sandi Tan is the writer, director, narrator, and star of Shirkers, the documentary slash true crime story of her first film (also called Shirkers) which she made with her high school pals, and a mysterious American benefactor. The benefactor, named...
Hot Docs 2018 Review: DREAMING MURAKAMI, Found In Translation
The perfect sentence does not exist. Language is a way of thinking, but it is a boundary, not the infinite. Perhaps, there is a perfect thought. Or a perfect dream. There is very likely a perfect musical note. Language remains...
Hot Docs 2017 Review: 78/52, An Endearing, Insightful Study of a Single Masterstroke of a Cinematic Legend
At the end of the Summer of 1960 audiences and fans of British auteur Alfred Hitchcock and his already stellar filmography scurried into cinemas to watch his new film, Psycho. Riding a growing wave of popularity, hot on the heels...
Hot Docs 2017 Review: BRIMSTONE & GLORY, Where Cinematography Induces Euphoria & Panic
Do you remember that sequence in Beasts Of The Southern Wild when everyone runs around shooting fireworks at each other in the Bayou? The glorious dance of the visuals and music grasp at the essence and the onslaught of life's...
Hot Docs 2017 Review: SHINERS, Making A Living With Polish
Opting for nothing less than an examination of the purpose and philosophy of 21st century labour -- in short, how and why do we work in an era of automation and disposable consumerism? -- Stacey Tenenbaum's re-evaluation of the humble...
Hot Docs Review 2017: RAMEN HEADS, Slurp-tastic Food Porn
What is it about ramen, Japan's robust working man's (be it salaryman, artist or labourer) meal of broth, noodles and pork, that makes its practitioners and enthusiasts become philosophers and seriocomic poets? Cinema has only encouraged this, as Itami Jûzô's gonzo, fussy,...
Hot Docs 2017 Review: HOBBYHORSE REVOLUTION Revels in the Intensity of Youth
Dressage, in equestrian terms, is the art of riding and training a horse in a manner that develops obedience, flexibility, and balance. It factors significantly into Selma Vilhunen's documentary on the most curious of Finland subcultures, one involving hobbyhorses and (mostly)...
Hot Docs 2017 Review: ALL THAT PASSES BY THROUGH A WINDOW THAT DOESN'T OPEN
I have a particular fondness for movies set on trains or in railyards, and also for documentaries about labour. Thus, it should come as no surprise, that Martin DiCicco's All That Passes By Through A Window That Doesn't Open caught...
Hot Docs 2017 Review: PACMEN Is Exquisite Schadenfreude
How many people have selfies taken with Dr. Ben Carson on their phones that they will probably never look at again? For a few shining moments, the former neurosurgeon whose stab-to-scalpel story was adapted into a television movie starring Cuba...
Hot Docs 2017 Review: DO DONKEYS ACT?, Perhaps the Strangest Piece of Animal Activism Ever Made
"Plunge into the intrinsic range of unfamiliar expressions, inside this wild sanctuary that offers a sonorious glimpse into the reveries, melodies, and rhapsodies of a great donkey orchestra." What will undoubtedly be the strangest film I catch at the 2017...
