Hot Docs 2012 was the festival’s most successful iteration to date, with approximately 165,000 admissions to the city-wide celebration of global documentary filmmaking.
The box-office enjoyed a bump of 10% over the 2011 edition not only can Torontonians handle the truth, it turns out, but we’re pretty eager for the chance.
The bulk of the festival’s awards were announced at a gala last Friday, but it wasn’t until Sunday night that the ballots of the People’s Choice Award could be tallied. The winner, announced earlier today, was Jeff Orlowski’s Chasing Ice, about photographer James Balog’s mission to photograph Arctic glaciers over several years.
Coming in second was Fredrik Gertten’s Big Boys Gone Bananas!*, which recounts the filmmaker’s experiences after releasing his 2008 documentary Bananas!. (It opens Friday at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema.) The top ten are ranked here.
And the Filmmakers Award, voted on exclusively by filmmakers whose documentaries were screening at Hot Docs this year, went to Bart Layton’s much-buzzed The Imposter, an enigmatic study of the events following a Texas teen’s disappearance. Indomina Releasing, which acquired the film after its Sundance bow, plans a North American theatrical run later this summer.
