Hot Docs 2021: COVID, consciousness and issues of colour, streaming to the fest's biggest audience ever

By Liam Lacey

 In a year that has seen us communicating almost exclusively through machines, it’s fitting that the Hot Docs International Film Festival 2021 will begin with a film that pays homage to our technological overlords. 

Canadian director Ann Shin’s A.rtificial I.mortality, which the director - speaking virtually at Tuesday morning’s festival opening presser - said was inspired by her father’s memory loss, follows current speculation on how consciousness might continue after the death of the physical body.

Because of the COVID pandemic, the Hot Docs festival, from April 29-to May 9, will once again be a virtual event. Though as executive director Brett Hendrie noted, the effect will expand rather than limit the potential audience. 

Ann Shin and her AI doppelgänger from A.rtificial I.mortality

This year’s festival consists of 219 long, mid-length and short films, half of which are directed by women, from 66 countries across 12 programs. It will be available, for the first time, to audiences across Canada.

Tickets for five-pack and 12-pack films are currently on sale at Hotdocs.ca, with single tickets available to Hot Docs members now, and to the general public from March 30. 

Tuesday morning’s rapid-fire Hot Docs video presser presented speed-date overviews from Hendrie and director of programming Shane Smith as well as members of the festival’s programming team. (It was relatively free of technological glitches, except for a.i. captioning, which rendered “Sami” as “Islamic”, “sharks” as “shoe,” and the woman-themed program Persister as “persistence.”)

Highlights of this year’s festival in the Special Presentations program include Up the Yangtze director Yung Changs Wuhan Wuhan, about the early days of the pandemic, one of several COVID-related films.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

But the pandemic isn’t the only urgent subject on the Hot Docs screens. Several films about race include With Drawn Arms, about the 1968 summer Olympics, Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, Sol Guy’s meditation on race and family in The Death of My Two Fathers and Toronto journalist-filmmaker, Tanya Talaga’s Spirit to Soar, based on her book  about the death of seven First Nations youth in Thunder Bay.

Lighter themes include The Taste of Desire (the world of oysters); Dirty Tricks (bridge playing), Come Back Anytime (about a Japanese ramen chef) and Hysterical, focusing on female comics including Margaret Cho and Fortune Feimster.

In the competitive International Spectrum, highlights include:

-Any Given Day, about mental illness in a Chicago probation program. 

-Magaluf Ghost Town, about the tourist-infested Spanish island community.

-The Silence of the Mole, about a journalist who infiltrated the Guatemala’s dictatorship in the seventies.

-Songs That Flood the River, about an Afro-Colombian woman who turns traditional funeral chants into songs about the horrors of war.

-Four Seasons in a Day, about Irish sea ferry passengers discussing Brexit.

-And Gaucho Americano, about Chilean gauchos on an Idaho ranch.

The World Showcase includes the world premiere of Sunny, which follows a Georgian social worker in Tbilisi going door-to-door asking questions about sexuality, minority rights and nationalism; Neighboring Moon, about teenaged sisters and their mother, taking refuge in an Aleppo hospital through the war and pandemic; Blue Box, which explores the legacy of international program to acquire Israeli territory; My Mohamed is Different, about older European women and younger Egyptian me.

Also in World Showcase, Only I Can Hear brings together children of deaf parents; and in The Colonel’s Stray Dogs, the director considers his father’s life as an exile from Mu’ammar Al-Gaddafi’s Libya. 

Other film programs include Artscapes, Canadian Spectrum, The Changing Face of Europe, Made in Colombia (this year’s national spotlight country), Markers (form-bending films, named after French filmmaker Chris Marker),  Nightvision (unusuall or racy subjects), Persisters (women-themed)  and Shorts.

Among the new Hot Docs initiatives is Citizen Minutes. a commissioned series of eight short films focusing on Canadian democracy and public affairs. The films are free for the duration of the festival.  A new thematic program, Systems Down, focuses on challenges to the political and social status quo. 

 As well as films, the festival will include live and taped conversations, included in the Big Ideas series, presented by Scotia Wealth Management. The program offers conversations on themes related to this year’s festival, including interviews with Australian underwater photographer Valerie Taylor (Playing with Sharks); the filmmakers behind Street Gang: How we Got to Sesame Street; designer Bruce Mau and partner Bisi Williams (Mau) on creativity and design. 

A discussion of Black esthetics and beauty standards includes participation from singer-songwriter Jully Black, professor Cheryl Thompson and filmmaker Jennifer Holness.. 

And filmmaker Jed Rothstein, Wall Street Journal reporter Maureen Farrell and former WeWork employee Megan Mallow recount the rise and fall of the shared work space company featured in the film WeWork: The Making and Breaking of a $47-Billion Unicorn.

The Hot Docs International Film Festival runs from April 29-May 9. For a complete description of films and ticket purchase, go to the web site at www.hotdocs.ca