Hot Docs ’24: What to See at the Planet’s Biggest Documentary Film Festival, Pt. 2
By Original-Cin Staff
Jim Slotek, Liz Braun, Thom Ernst, Karen Gordon, Kim Hughes, John Kirk, Chris Knight, Liam Lacey, and Bonnie Laufer
With 168 documentaries from 64 countries and 83 world and international premieres, this year’s Hot Docs Festival — the 31st annual, running April 25 through to May 5 at theatres across Toronto — seems certain to build on past excellence, showcasing stories about everything under the sun from veteran filmmakers and newbies alike.
Once again, the team at Original-Cin is previewing as many titles as possible. In addition to these capsule reviews, upcoming coverage will include interviews with key players plus a spotlight on the Festival’s popular Made In program, this year featuring documentaries from Spain.
Visit the Hot Docs website for ticket information and updates on additional screenings and rush-seating opportunities for sold-out films. As always, our best advice is to see as much as you can. You never know when you will have another chance to view such a wide array of intriguing, passionate, urgent, delightful, spellbinding films about our world and its myriad inhabitants.
American Cats: The Good, the Bad, and the Cuddly
Sun, Apr. 28, 11:30 am, Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema; Mon, Apr. 29, 8:30 pm, TIFF Lightbox 2.
It’s a documented fact that cat declawing is mutilation: a third of a cat’s toe is amputated, invariably leading to chronic pain and diminished quality of life. It also, ironically, can lead to more aggressive behaviour such as biting since the cat has no other means to thwart unwanted touching. And yet in the United States, the barbaric procedure persists because it makes fast money. As American Cats notes, roughly 1.1 million cats are declawed each year at a cost of about $900 per procedure, raking in just shy of U.S. $1 billion. (All Canadian provinces except Ontario — sigh — have banned it). Amy Hoggart, British correspondent with Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, guides viewers through this industry, talking to advocates on both sides with a clear bias against declawing. Her approach incorporates an audience-pleasing mix of humour and pathos but lacks the journalistic rigour the subject demands. Still, for cat lovers, there’s plenty to ogle here. And any voice raised against declawing, even an occasionally silly one, is worth amplifying. KH
Fri, Apr. 26, 2 pm, TIFF Lightbox 2; Sat, Apr. 27, 10 am, Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.
After the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan in 2021, 20 million women lost their rights overnight. This engaging film from directors Aeyliya Husain and Amie Williams follows three politicians and a journalist, all women, who were evacuated from Afghanistan for their own safety. Now the women live in Canada and attempt to help those they’ve left behind, as gender apartheid destroys the lives of women living under Taliban rule. There’s no place on this planet where women can take their basic rights for granted. LB
Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story
Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story
Tues, Apr 30, 11:15 am, TIFF Lightbox 2; Sat, May 4, 2:25 pm, TIFF Lightbox 1.
“Let me tell you a story about a man. My man… Billy. And how he was lost for a while. Until beauty found him.” So begins Billy & Molly, a supremely lovely film, both cinematically (it’s a National Geographic title) and emotionally (the adorably precocious critter of the title). The words we hear are spoken by Billy’s wife Susan, who narrates this tale of a man spiritually redeemed by an otter. For real. When a scrawny and presumably orphaned young otter washes up on the jetty of Billy and Susan’s home in the remote Shetland Islands, the pair begin feeding it. Food begets customized shelter and other splendid accoutrements. Along the way, Billy is elevated by this odd but oddly reciprocal relationship, which will be familiar to anyone who has ever cared for a community cat. While we never discover what made Billy lost in the first place, viewers witness his quiet grounding as the playful Molly becomes what nature intended her to be against a ruggedly stunning backdrop that is “Britain’s last outpost before the Arctic.” KH
Fri, Apr. 26, 6:30 pm, Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema; Thurs, May 2, 5:15 pm, TIFF Lightbox 2; Sun, May 5, 2:15 pm, TIFF Lightbox 1.
In one respect, the story of Toronto master chef Sash Simpson’s childhood on the streets of India mirrors that of the real-life character from the movie Lion, which hints at the scope of lost children. But Barry Avrich’s biographical doc is like multiple movies. It’s the story, lit by dim memory, of life on the streets and in an orphanage in Chennai (formerly Madras). It’s a portrait of altruists Sandra and Lloyd Simpson, who fostered 31 international orphans in a Forest Hill mansion. It’s an underdog story of a rookie chef who talked and worked his way into the onetime “it” restaurant North 44 and eventually opened his own. And it’s the search for his past on the bustling streets of Chennai and Mumbai, a voyage that becomes a gastronomic epiphany. That’s a lot to pack in one film. Of them all, the Indian scenes are the most resonant and emotional, popping with colour and flavours. JS
Sat, May 4, 11:15 am, Scotiabank Theatre 6; Sat, May 4, 2:30 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 7.
At just under 40 minutes, Chasing Time serves as an epilogue to Jeff Orlowski-Yang’s landmark 2012 environmental documentary Chasing Ice, which followed National Geographic photographer James Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey project, which used time-lapse cameras to capture a multiyear record of colossal glaciers disappearing into startling seconds-long images. Many of those time-lapse images reappear again in Orlowski-Yang’s follow-up, along with director Sarah Keo, which focuses on a more personal story of Baloga’s “spiritual” relationship to the landscape, his grief for melting glaciers, and his current cancer treatment. Poetic but not precious, the film isn’t shy about drawing parallels between planetary destruction and personal mortality; in Iceland, officials place the first of a series of bronze memorial markers for recently departed glaciers. LL
Sun, Apr. 28, 5 pm, TIFF Lightbox 3; Mon, Apr. 29, 9:30 pm, Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.
Three cheers for Curl Power, which follows five best friends from British Columbia who, more than anything, want to win the Canadian Junior Curling Championship. Over the course of three years, teammates Hannah, Brooklyn, Savannah, Ashley and Amy take us on a determined and emotional ride to fulfill their quest. Full disclosure, I did not expect all the feels watching this documentary. This is not your typical sports documentary. You’ll experience some surprising emotions watching this one and gain a whole new outlook on curling — and a true admiration for these players. BL
Tue, Apr. 30, 2:30 pm, TIFF Lightbox 3; Thurs, May 2, 12:45 pm, TIFF Lightbox 1.
Both a home movie and a true-crime story, Death of a Saint sees Ugandan-born, Denmark-based director Patricia Bbaale Bandak returning to her homeland to solve a mystery: Who were the men who shot her mother in an apparent robbery of her home on Christmas Eve in 1989 when Patricia was two years old? She reunites with her father, a successful banker, and many siblings, who left the country shortly after the murder. Mixing diary film, archival footage, and ad hoc interviews with cross-cultural observations, Bandak’s film has an easy conversational flow. She meets relatives and friends who comment on her physical similarity to her mother who they assure her was a saint, even if she wasn’t crazy about housework. After Bandak organizes a memorial ceremony for her late mother, a more complex story and explanation of the web of secrecy around her emerges. LL
Fri, Apr. 26, 4:15 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 7; Mon, Apr. 29, 1:30 pm, TIFF Lightbox 2.
A niche documentary about forest farming proves an opportunity to connect issues of Black intergenerational wealth and environmental sustainability in Jennifer MacArthur’s debut film. On one farm, Tyrone and Edna Williams are raising their three sons to inherit their forest farm and hoping to create a multigeneration legacy. On another farm, sisters Nikkie and Natalie Jeffries — who inherited their farm from their grandmother — are just beginning to learn what it takes to grow a healthy forest, while healing wounds in their own family. Guided by forestry experts, who take to the work of forest stewardship with a religious zeal, the families lay out plans decades into the future. Warmhearted if occasionally stagey (who brings a camera into family therapy?), Family Tree also has moments of humour. When asked, at a conference, to envision their farms five hundred years in the future, one of the farmers suggest that with some genetic modification, perhaps money can finally grow on trees. LL
Tues, Apr. 30, 5 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 5; Thurs, May 2, 2 pm, TIFF Lightbox 2.
Fragments of a Life Loved is one of the most unique and fascinating documentaries I have seen in a long time. While we have our own treasured memories of past relationships and loves, filmmaker Chloé Barreau takes it one step farther to get her past loves' side of their relationship story. And there are many. What is so interesting is that she was likely thinking ahead because, since age 16, Barreau has filmed her lovers. It’s almost voyeuristic, but truthfully you can’t look away as the filmmaker brings us intimate firsthand accounts, mixed with private footage from many of her past loves. Tender and truthful, it’s a wonderful journey into the human experience that shouldn’t be missed. BL
Sun, Apr. 28, 4:30 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 6; Tue, Apr. 30, 11:45 am, Scotiabank Theatre 5.
Every marriage contains contradictions and compromises and the relationship between former U.S. congressman Pete McLowskey, now 96, and his 70-year-old wife Helen McLowskey is no different. Whether their half-century relationship is unusual enough to merit this casual feature-length documentary by Helen’s niece, Alix Blair, is an open question. But Pete and Helen are good company, an attractive, politically engaged couple who live with a menagerie of animals on their California organic farm. There, they cuddle and kvetch, watch election coverage and do magic mushrooms together on their anniversary. Pete (a.k.a. Bear) is a macho Korean war vet and lawyer turned pacifist and liberal during the Vietnam War who, after a first marriage and four children, married Helen, a former aide 26 years his junior.
As Blair’s film dips back into Helen’s journals and reminiscences, we learn how she shared his politics, love of nature, and political beliefs but chafed at her loss of independence, leading to a six-year extramarital relationship with another woman and her “diagnosed but untreated depression.” In lighter moments, the film suggests a pilot for a seventies’ sitcom about opposites who attract. Helen feigns annoyance when he calls her a “hot chick,” and when Pete tells the director with a confiding chuckle, “She had a secret anger against men,” Helen snaps back, “It wasn’t secret!” Cue the laugh track. LL
Nice Ladies
Wed, May 1, 8:45 pm TIFF Lightbox 3; Sat, May 4, 2:30 pm, TIFF Lightbox 2.
A moving testament to the power of resilience in team sports in the face of extreme adversity, Nice Ladies follows the eponymous, award-winning international cheerleading team from Kharkiv, Ukraine from 2020 to about 2023. Aged 38 to 75, these women compete against other teams half their age and still win. When Russia invades Ukraine, their devotion to their sport — and to each other — is the force that keeps them sane and united in the belief their country will be victorious following the conflict. A drama that speaks to humans’ ability to withstand trauma, these women are more than sisters. They are the spirit of tenacity, united through sport and a belief in their country. This is a film that will leave its audience with inspiration and hope for Ukraine. JK
Fri, Apr. 26, 2:30 pm, TIFF Lightbox 1; Mon, Apr. 29, 11:30 am, Scotiabank Theatre 6.
Quebec director Laurence Lévesque’s feature documentary debut is a quietly powerful film that looks at family legacy and intergenerational trauma. It follows Noriko Oi, a Japanese Canadian woman who has returned to her childhood home in Nagasaki to prepare it for sale. There, she finds a series of her late mother Mitsuko’s letters that reveal pieces of the family’s past that were never spoken of. Her mother survived the bombing of Nagasaki, but like many survivors didn’t speak of it. Lévesque tells the story with elegance and restraint, often shooting Oi from the back. Oi meets with several other survivors who tell their stories. The film’s tone is contemplative, leaving us space to empathize with Oi, to respond to the survivors, and to wonder what the descendants of survivors of humankind’s endless wars will be contemplating 70 years from now. KG
Wed, May 1, 5:45 pm, TIFF Lightbox 3; Fri, May 3, 2:30 pm, Scotiabank 5.
What are the police? How were they formed? Do cops in America prevent crime or do they control a social hierarchy, protecting some, but not others? This informative and disturbing documentary from Oscar-nominated director Yance Ford shines a light on the increasingly militaristic police forces of the U.S. and their terrifying power. Often poetic language accompanies ugly images of police brutality. LB
Wed, May 1, 5 pm, Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema; Fri, May 3, 5:30 pm, TIFF Lightbox 1.
There’s a fine line between inspiration and appropriation, honour and caricature, admiration and worship. Red Fever, co-directed by Catherine Bainbridge and Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond (2009’s Reel Injun), threads that needle, not always perfectly but with great heart and not a little humour. (At one point it claims that “Oklahoma” translates into “more casinos than Nevada.”) Diamond sets out to explore why “Native Americans” — the film globetrots but sticks mostly within the U.S. — are revered and yet misunderstood by others. They are still often painted as stoic warriors or mystic shamans, in an age when other stereotypes (remember the “inscrutable Oriental?”) have fallen away. The film tends to reach beyond its grasp: you might come away thinking the Haudenosaunee Confederacy was the model for American democracy. But it is pushing back against a half millennium of colonial misinformation. That’s a lot of momentum to overcome. CK
Fri, May 3, 8:15 pm Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema; Sat, May 4, 8:30 pm, TIFF Lightbox 2.
Some people—I'm inclined to think most people—choose to limit their time inside a shopping mall. However, a group of art students in Providence, Rhode Island took the concept of mallrat to the next level. These students don't just hang out in the mall; they live there. The students built a secret room (one student calls it a condo) inside the mall and, for four years, lived there undetected. Filmmaker Jeremy Workman tells the story through first-person interviews and footage taken on cameras hidden in Altoid tins. Workman captures a playfulness as the students go about the business of building their secret room. With the enthusiasm of kids building a fort, they build walls, put in doors, furnish the room, and tap into the mall's electrical system. But what inspired the move? Was it municipal politics, artistic endeavours, free rent, or simply fulfilling a childhood fantasy inspired by zombie apocalypse survivors holed up in a mall in the film Dawn of the Dead? TE
Tues, Apr. 30, 8:15 pm, TIFF Lightbox 3; Thurs, May 2, 4:45 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 7.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, goes the refrain. But for the subjects in director Ken Wardrop’s exquisitely shot-in-35mm film, the advent of Christmas — with its aggressively joyful veneer — brings only dread. The sprawling holiday smorgasbord terrifies the woman with the eating disorder. A widower labours to maintain tradition during the first Christmas after the sudden death of his “wife and soul mate.” A struggling single mother can’t fathom how to fête the day for her three kids when she can barely feed them. And so on. Of course, painful triggers are everywhere. What’s perhaps most remarkable about So This Is Christmas — apart from the filmmakers’ ability to coax such candour from his subjects — is the range of emotions inspired. There’s sadness and tears but also humour owing to its Irish provenance, a place where tragedy and comedy are always bedfellows. It also ends on a lovely, hopeful note. KH
Sun, Apr. 28, 2:15 pm, TIFF Lightbox 2; Wed, May 1, 4:15 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 7.
If you followed the news accounts of Kazakhstan’s political protests of January 2022 — and government crackdown that killed more than 227 with 10,000 arrested — you would have learned that the principal cause was rising fuel prices. In this first-person documentary, filmmaker Katerina Suvorova offers a corrective. She begins in July 2018, when beloved Kazakhstani Olympic skater Denis Ten was murdered in the street by two men attempting to steal his car mirrors, leading to memorials and protests against police incompetence and lack of transparency.
Suvorova follows two organizers who are at odds on strategy and temperament but committed to overturning the system. An increasingly repressive government puts them under surveillance, cuts off their phones, and begins cracking down on public protests. Near the film’s conclusion, the time jumps forward three years to 2022, when the protests transformed into an essentially leaderless popular uprising, met with the full force of state violence. LL
Wed, May 1, 1:30 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 6.
This year’s Hot Docs festival presents a welcome reprise of Sarah Polley’s most personal film, from 2012. Over the course of almost two hours, the director explores the circumstances of her birth, which began with an extramarital affair in Montreal in 1978. But what could have been a wretched ego trip — who is my real father? — instead becomes a touching, universal story about how families choose to remember and deal with the past. Stories We Tell may be about the long-lasting waves that follow the splash of infidelity, but it’s also about how stories are made in the telling. Polley’s biological father tells her at one point that she’ll never get to the truth, and she’ll never touch bottom. He’s right, of course. In the ocean of truth, we’re forever treading water, swimming for our lives. CK
Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted
Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted
Wed, May 1, 8:15 pm Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema; Fri, May 3, 5:15 pm, Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.
As quaint and quirky as its title, Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted is pure magic. The instant the title cards blaze off the screen like 3D graphics from a 1970s Cleopatra Jones movie, you know you're in for something special. A film about talent, music, and the unstable industry that brought three men together, it’s mostly the story of Jerry Williams Jr., a.k.a. Swamp Dogg, one of North America's most prolific country R&B musicians. Now turning 80, Swamp Dogg wants to throw a party. That means getting the pool painted. The presence of the pool painter becomes a jumping point for Swamp Dogg to reminisce about his life and career. Its cast of unforgettable characters makes it feel like parting ways with new friends you hope to see again when the movie ends. TE
The Conquest of Space (screening (with Cyborg Generation)
Fri, Apr. 26, 8 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 6; Sun, Apr. 28, 7:15 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 6.
We celebrate astronauts, but they weren’t the first inhabitants of Earth to explore the heavens. The Conquest of Space pays homage to the wide variety of animals subjected to intense tests to learn about the various effects of space travel on human biology. They need to be remembered for their sacrifice. Beginning with the fruit flies that were placed on board German V2 rockets and culminating with Ham, the chimpanzee Americans used as a subject prior to the Mercury program, this short doc provides a surprisingly thorough historical overview of animals who went into space and a summary of their anguish. A sobering realization of the suffering animals made in the name of space travel asks viewers: was it worth it? The conquest of space is far from over, but we need to celebrate the efforts of the animal pioneers as well as the human ones. JK
The Fabulous Gold Harvesting Machine
Sun, Apr. 28, 4 pm Scotiabank Theatre 7; Tues, Apr. 30, 8:30 pm, Scotiabank Theatre 7.
This emotionally moving and personal family tale touches on social issues but is primarily a relationship story. Toto, 60, independently pans for gold in cold mud in Tierra del Fuego, Chile, wet to the bone, in a dormant mine where the public is allowed to try their luck. For Toto, it's a 40-year endeavour that’s earned him a subsistence living, a stroke, and multiple seizures. Unable to convince Toto to stop, his son Javier studies expensive mining machines and resolves to engineer his own while his father is alive. In fact, if mining companies thought the mine had any significant gold, they’d already be there. But Javier’s big dreams and a tight bond with his father keeps him motivated. The movie — which captures dramatic events, from rockslides to Latino rodeo — focuses on the amiably grouchy Toto and his philosophy of life. A touching personal portrait. JS