By Original-Cin Staff

If the COVID-19 epidemic has produced any kind of silver lining for organizers behind the 28th annual Hot Docs documentary film festival, it’s this: people stuck at home, and even those working the frontlines, have ample discretionary time.

It’s not like any of us are mingling at the local bistro after a round of golf and ahead of that evening’s live music event. For once, this kaleidoscopic collection of non-fiction titles from around the globe — some 219 films from 66 countries in 12 programs, 50 per cent directed by women and picked from a staggering 2,300 submissions — has as its audience a locked-down population starved for entertainment able to transport us to other worlds.

To be sure, not all the worlds presented at Hot Docs 2021 are shiny and uncomplicated. But, as your nanna always said, variety is the spice of life. And it’s hard to picture a festival with a broader or more engaging range of subjects, perspectives, agendas or ideas.

In addition to being ridiculously rich in content, the festival is also affordable and accessible.

Tickets can be purchased online, and films streamed at home. Single tickets to screenings are $13 each ($11.50 for Hot Docs members). Also available is a festival 5-pack ($55 or $49.50 for members), a festival 12-pack ($125 and $112.50), and an unlimited pass ($259 and $233.10).

New and noteworthy: the festival is available across Canada for the first time. And since everything is streamed, films aren’t locked to a set day or time. All films are available to stream anytime beginning April 29 through May 9. Once you hit “start” you can watch the film for 48 hours. (All your Hot Docs streaming FAQs are answered here).

So, what to watch? There’s the rub. Original-Cin staffers have screened dozens of titles and have put together loads of capsule-size reviews as well as talent interviews, think pieces, and more throughout the festival’s run. (First batch ‘o’ reviews right here and the second right here).

In reviewing the lineup, we noticed some singular themes emerging across these various programs, which themselves vary from things like The Markers Program (featuring “experimental films that take bold liberties with the documentary form”) to The Nightvision Program (“future cult classics”) to The Persister Program (“female-directed films about women speaking up and being heard”).

Here are a few topics with films drawn from various programs that got us buzzing.

Music

Arguably the biggest and most expansive theme at Hot Docs 2021, with multiple films profiling artists and the work that they do, including (but not limited to):

7 Years of Lukas Graham, spotlighting the ascent and crest of the Danish pop-soul band with lots of intimate backstage, studio, and road time but absolutely no bad-boy behaviour.

The Sparks Brothers, director Edgar Wright’s Sundance darling profiling the decades-long career of the musical Mael brothers who may be the world’s biggest cult band… and easily the most influential this side of the Velvet Underground.

Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché, looks at the X-Ray Spex frontwoman and original riot grrrl through the eyes of her daughter, with all the personal heft such a journey entails.

Summer of Soul (...Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised), the debut film from renowned musician and Tonight Show bandleader Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson is described as “part music film, part historical record” though it’s bound to be much more.

Watch the Sound With Mark Ronson sounds like a gearhead’s dream with dives into Auto-Tune, sampling, and reverb techniques via interviews with everyone from Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl to Charli XCX.

FANNY: The Right to Rock, gives long-overdue props to the 60s-era all-girl garage band loved by David Bowie but ultimately lost to delete bins… until now, as the trio revisits the past and seeks a comeback.

Rockfield: The Studio on the Farm, whereby everyone from Robert Plant, Ozzy Osbourne, and Liam Gallagher recall making records at the famed dairy farm-cum-recording studio in the Welsh countryside.

*Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy*

Indigenous Prodigal Daughters

There are not one but two films in which acclaimed Indigenous Canadian women make unhappy returns to their hometowns.

Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy sees filmmaker and actor Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open) reunite with the Blackfoot Kainai First Nation in Alberta, the biggest reserve in the country, and ground zero for a raging fentanyl epidemic.

Meanwhile, in Spirit to Soar, Tanya Talaga — who wrote the book Seven Fallen Feathers, about the unsolved deaths of seven Indigenous young people in Thunder Bay — returns to the place of her childhood. There, she follows up, largely with dismay, on the 2016 inquest into the deaths and history of abuse and inaction by Thunder Bay police.

Read Original-Cin’s interview with Tanya Talaga

Stories of Refugees and Exile Are Everywhere

The Last Shelter observes a migrant house in Mali, one of the last safe spots before the desert and ocean for Esther and Kady, 16-year-old girls from Burkino Faso, hoping to reach Europe. In Welcome to Spain, a one-time brothel in Seville functions as refugee centre and the diverse stories of its residents, fleeing war and persecution.

In A Black Jesus, set in a small town in Sicily, a young Ghanian man wonders why the town’s people fear black refugees but worship a statue of a black Jesus, and asks to participate in the town’s sacred procession.

Other migrants are driven by the need for money. In the meditative Gaucho Americano, two Patagonian herders follow a vast sheep flock through the wilds of Idaho. In All-In, a couple of young villagers take summer jobs on the Turkish Riviera and fantasize about luxurious foreign living.

While people are stopped by borders, dirty money moves all too freely around the world. In the French investigative documentary, The Caviar Connection, we see how Azerbaijan’s regime bribed European politicians to legitimize its human rights abuses, and how a coalition of investigative journalists fought back.

Closer to home, the Canadian documentary Dead Man’s Switch a crypto mystery tracks the bizarre story of Bitcoin hustler Gerald Cotton, who apparently died in India at the age of 30, taking with him more than $200 million of investors’ money.

Food, Food, and More Food

Hot Docs always serves up a fine banquet of food-themed films. This year’s slate covers obsessions to batty fun.

A loving trip to a tiny Tokyo ramen shop run by a self-taught chef whose noodle soup has built a community among devoted customers, Come Back Anytime tops my food film list.

Man in the Field: The Life and Art of Jim Denevan: California landscape artist and chef Jim Denevan uses the beach as his canvas and the landscape to create a different kind of art with his travelling Outstanding in the Field long-table farm-to-plate dinners.

Dutch doc The Taste of Desire explores why the oyster is their world for a variety of people, from chefs to a burlesque performer.

Set!: The knives are out in the cutthroat world of competitive table setting in Scott Gawlik’s lighthearted doc.

Help, I’ve Gone Viral!: A Norwegian man’s tongue-in-cheek love song to Sumatra’s multi-dish national feast nasi padang makes him a viral sensation in Indonesia in this 20-minute short.

And Yes… COVID-19

Surely a topic that needs no introduction. Titles include:

Sieged: The Press vs. Denialism couldn’t be timelier. As Brazil’s infection and death rate skyrocket concurrent with president Jair Bolsonaro’s refusal to do anything except berate his citizenry, the film "tells the story of the frontline journalists… desperate to warn of an impending public health disaster.”

Wuhan Wuhan. Can’t better the official description: “With unprecedented access, director Yung Chang looks beyond statistics and headlines to reveal the emotions and resilience at the core of our shared humanity.”

Viral, which documents in real time COVID-19’s impact on seven Gen-Zers across the globe who posted about the pandemic on social media, chronicling the fall-out it brought to their lives.

Hot Docs 2021: Big, Bold Documentary Festival Is Just What our Weary World Needs Now

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