Not sure what to see today at Hot Docs? Here, find our picks, with links to full reviews and showtimes.
>>> The Battle of Chile
The Battle Of Chile, screening in its entirety as part of the retrospective honouring Patricio Guzmán’s Outstanding Achievement Award, is one of the most important documentaries ever made. See full review.
Around The World in 50 Concerts
The title’s a misnomer. Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra may have gone around the world, but veteran documentarian Heddy Honigmann keeps the focus on three cities: Buenos Aires, Soweto and St. Petersburg. See full review.
Journey with Prabhat
Established in 1929 when five employees of the giant Maharashtra Film Company decided to go off on their own, Prabhat became the more daring production house of India’s early sound era. (Think of it as the United Artists of the Subcontinent.) It was shuttered in 1953 and reopened as the Film Institute of India a decade later, and filmmakers who are old enough to remember it recount its history, accompanied by fragments of its films. See full review.
>>> Drone
Tonje Hessen Schei’s Drone starts from the presumption that remotely piloted airborne vehicles are a bad idea they turn actual combat into video games that remove any risk to the pilots and thus distance them from the consequences of their lethal actions. See full review.
>>> Stand By For Tape Back-Up
Stand By For Tape Back-up isn’t a documentary, really. Technically, it’s the filmed version of a theatre piece, director/creator Ross Sutherland’s off-screen monologue set to the stuttering, degraded visuals of an old VHS cassette his family used to record TV broadcasts in England in the 80s. See full review.
The Wolfpack
Raiders! isn’t the only Hot Docs entry in which rambunctious kids recreate a beloved movie. The six Angulo brothers (aided occasionally by their sister) spent a great deal of their adolescence in their New York apartment making charmingly threadbare camcorder versions of their favourite features, including Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. See full review.
>>> Best of Enemies
This account of the 10 incendiary debates between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal during the 1968 Republican and Democratic conventions recalls a time long gone. See full review.
>>> Missing People
Manhattan art gallery director Martina Bartan hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep since 1978, when her younger brother was brutally murdered near their childhood home in Queens. See full review.
Rolling Papers
Mitch Dickman started shooting the day marijuana became legal in Colorado. Not surprisingly, the first flick to look at the ramifications of legalizing pot in America tends to take on too much too superficially. See full review.
Jesus Town USA
In the foothills of Witchita, the organizers and participants of a passion play with an 88-year history discover that their Jesus is a Buddhist. See full review.
>>> The Creeping Garden
Have you’ve ever taken a moment to think about plasmodial slime moulds and wondered what purpose they serve in nature? How they go about performing their functions, what it is they want? See full review.
>>> Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
Kurt Cobain, it turns out, was a list-maker. To-do lists, potential band names and myriad organizational scribbles filled his notebooks, to which director Brett Morgan had access for the making of this family-approved documentary about the troubled grunge star. See full review.
>>> Toto and His Sisters
When their mother is jailed for drug trafficking, 10-year-old Toto and his two teenaged sisters scramble to survive on their own in this devastating slice of poverty-stricken life. See full review.