Screening tonight at the Lightbox at 9:45pm is this thriller of a documentary, that pulls the curtain back from the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts within the continental United States and the revelation that it isn’t all as above-board and by the book as the public would like to believe. Saeed, alias Shariff, an ex-con has been working…
Tag: hot docs
Hot Docs 2015: Tuk-Tuk – Romany Saad
Screening today at the Scotiabank theatre at 9:15 is this vibrant and intriguing look at the streets of Cairo, through the eyes of three young boys. Bika, Abdullah and Sharon are young, energetic, and hardworking, driving their motorized rickshaws, tuk-tuks, through the busy back streets and throughways of the city. Definitely not old enough to…
Hot Docs 2015: Raiders! – Jeremy Coon & Tim Skousen
Screening today at the Hart House theatre at 9:30 is a documentary that completely encapsulated my youth and filled me with awe, and a fire to create. Back in 1981, a film came along that changed many a young viewer, myself included, Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. It affected a number of…
Hot Docs – A Woman Like Me – Alex Sichel, Elizabeth Giamatti
When Alex Sichel is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she immediately envisions another woman – a different version of herself – who undergoes the same journey, but in the spirit of living through it, rather than dying from it. Ever the filmmaker, Alex embarks on a mission to tell her own story, through both voices –…
Hot Docs 2015: Circus Dynasty – Anders Riis-Hansen
Screening today at the Lightbox theatre at 6:30 (rush tickets only, I’m afraid) is this magical, and heart-touching love story set against the back drop of one of Europe’s largest circuses, the Circus Arena! Patrick Bendino is the heir apparent to his the family circus, he’s trained, he’s skilled, and he’s learning to manage and be ringmaster, he’s…
Hot Docs 2015: Chuck Norris Vs Communism – Ilinca Calugareanu
Screening today at the Hart House theatre at 9:30pm is this masterful, and highly enjoyable documentary that plays like a Cold War thriller. The year is 1985. The place, Romania, a country under strict control by its socialist/communist government, there’s one television channel for the nation, and it broadcasts nothing but state propaganda. The…
Hot Docs 2015: The Barkley Marathons – The Race That Eats Its Young – Annika Iltis & Timothy Kane
This evening at the Isabel Bader theatre there were laughs and applause at one of the most entertaining documentaries surely to grace the screen at Hot Docs this year had its first screening. Paired with the delightful, Born To Be Mild short directed by Andy Oxley, which showcased some rather intentionally uninteresting people in England….
Hot Docs 2015: Jesus Town USA – Julian Pinder and Billie Mintz
Screening today at the Isabel Bader theatre at 9:15pm is this documentary that plays more like a feature film in its construction than a documentary, it has that wonderful mockumentary Christopher Guest feel to it. The setting is a small town in Oklahoma, not so very far from the Holy City of the Wichitas, a…
Hot Docs 2015: The Queen of Silence – Agnieszka Zwiefka
Screening today at the ROM theatre at 7pm, is this beautiful, joyous and heartbreaking film… With an objective eye, Zwiefka plunges into the reality of an illegal, tiny Roma slum on the outskirts of a Polish suburb. Families struggle to survive, living in their shanty town, their children dumpster-diving for clothes and toys, while their parents…
The Last Man On The Moon (2014) – Mark Craig
The Bloor Cinema/Hot Doc’s 2014 – 2015 Doc Soup is coming to an end, and I couldn’t imagine a better picture to close out this year’s run than this amazing documentary. Back in the early 70s, somewhere between my introductions to Star Wars and Star Trek, my young brain processed the fact that at…
The Mind Reels 