Hot Docs will celebrate the careers of American director Julia Reichert and Vancouver filmmaker Julia Ivanova and cast a spotlight on Italian documentaries at this year’s festival.
Reichert is the recipient of Hot Docs outstanding achievement award. She has been making documentaries for half a century, breaking out in 1971 with Growing Up Female, the first feature doc about the women’s movement. She co-directed the Emmy-winning PBS documentary miniseries A Lion In The House with Steven Bognar, and produced and co-directed the Oscar-nominated Union Maids, Seeing Red and The Last Truck: Closing Of A GM Plant.
She’ll be honoured with a retrospective of her work, and is coming to Toronto for an on-stage conversation and Q&As after selected screenings.
A Russian expat who moved to Canada in the 90s, Ivanova is the subject the festival’s Focus On retrospective, having been designated this year’s “significant Canadian filmmaker.”
In addition to Family Portrait In Black And White, named best Canadian feature at Hot Docs 2011, her other films include Fatherhood Dreams, Limit Is The Sky and From Russia, For Love. She’s currently working on a film about the Trans Mountain Pipeline, but she’ll take a break from that to attend the festival.
Finally, this year’s country-specific Made In program will focus on Italy.
The specific films to be screened in Reichert’s and Ivanova’s retrospectives will be announced in March, along with the Italian films.
The 26th annual Hot Docs festival runs from April 25 to May 5. For more information visit the festival website.
@normwilner
