Documentary
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Hot Docs 2020: Doc-Makers Discuss the Newly Virtual Deal Maker and Distribution Rendezvous Programs
Hot Docs was one of the first of the Spring, 2020 film festivals to forge ahead through the pandemic chaos and reemerge on the online side as a more streamlined event. North America’s largest doc fest took the hybrid approach of postponing public screenings while providing a Hot Docs at Home streaming option to those social distancing in Canada. It also transferred its conference and market to the digital realm. Hot Docs also expanded its industry running dates to a whopping full month (April 30-May 31) of online accessibility, uploading everything from the “Why Art Matters in a Time of […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 28, 2020 -
Hot Docs 2020: Decision Makers Discuss the Newly Virtual Edition of the Forum, Deal Maker and Distribution Rendezvous
Hot Docs was one of the first of the Spring, 2020 film festivals to forge ahead through the pandemic chaos and reemerge on the online side as a more streamlined event. North America’s largest doc fest took the hybrid approach of postponing public screenings while providing a Hot Docs at Home streaming option to those social distancing in Canada. It also transferred its conference and market to the digital realm. Hot Docs also expanded its industry running dates to a whopping full month (April 30-May 31) of online accessibility, uploading everything from the “Why Art Matters in a Time of […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 28, 2020 -
“The Most Important Thing in an Image is the Feeling That What You’re Seeing is Completely True — Like an Accident….”: Bruno Santamaría on his Hot Docs Digital-Debuting Things We Dare Not Do
Executive produced by Charlotte Cook, and making its debut at this year’s (virtual) Hot Docs, Bruno Santamaría’s Things We Dare Not Do is a stunning look at the small Mexican town of Roblito through the eyes of its deeply impoverished, yet happy-go-lucky, youngsters. Serving as mother hen to the carefree kids, for whom random violence seems no more noteworthy than water delivery day or a taco snack, is 16-year-old Ñoño. Though the vivacious teen’s exploration of his own gender identity forms the basis of the film’s title, Things We Dare Not Do is no mere coming out saga. It’s a […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 28, 2020 -
“Should You Give the Person a Hug, or Should You Continue Filming?”: Benjamin Ree on His Art World Crime Doc The Painter and the Thief
The following interview with director Benjamin Ree about his documentary The Painter and the Thief was published during the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. It’s being rerun now to coincide with the virtual cinema and VOD release of the film from NEON. Spectacularly cinematic and employing a risk-taking structure that keeps the viewer as off-balance as the film’s emotionally fragile protagonists, The Painter and the Thief is the second feature-length doc from Norwegian director Benjamin Ree. (Ree’s prior film Magnus, a coming-of-age tale about the chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016.) The film follows the stranger-than-fiction story of […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 23, 2020 -
The Audience as a Virtual Jury: Roee Messinger on Tonight’s Screening of American Trial: The Eric Garner Story
How does one relitigate a case that was never litigated (outside the media) in the first place? This is the challenge at the heart of Roee Messinger’s American Trial: The Eric Garner Story, which premiered at last year’s New York Film Festival and releases online today May 21st, accompanied by a live stream Q&A and interactive audience component. The film is an unscripted courtroom drama that casts real-life prosecutors and defense attorneys (though none directly involved with the 2014 case of the NYPD officer videotaped choking Staten Islander Eric Garner to death), alongside real-life evidence, expert testimony, and rules of […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 21, 2020 -
“We Read Adam’s Blog Every Day… So It Was Like a Daily Script”: Pia Hellenthal on Her Social Media-Themed Doc, Searching Eva
Having made my “Best Yet-to-be-Distributed Docs 2019” list, Pia Hellenthal’s Searching Eva, currently streaming on Mubi USA and with a virtual release upcoming on June 2nd through Syndicado, can now be shifted to the “best docs of 2020” category. My assessment of this “portrait of a restless, gender-ambiguous, philosophical millennial who documents her entire life — from fashion week to freelance sex work — online” might not make the film seem like must-see viewing. But that’s precisely the point — and what makes Hellenthal’s talent all the more apparent. As an often cynical critic who couldn’t care less about a globetrotting […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 20, 2020 -
“You Can Only Sit on a Zoom Call for So Long”: Tamara Mariam Dawit (Finding Sally) on Online Markets and the Hot Docs 2020 Digital Experience
Splitting her time between Toronto and Addis Ababa, Canadian-Ethiopian filmmaker Tamara Mariam Dawit is no stranger to international workshops and events. (Or to Hot Docs. When the pandemic hit the longtime alum had been set to premiere her latest Finding Sally, a personal investigation into the life of a long-lost communist rebel aunt four decades after her disappearance.) “I think the upside of online meetings is that the cost is less. You don’t have to pay for flights and hotels, which is what often makes attending a market like Cannes or the EFM too expensive for many people,” Dawit offered. “And […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 20, 2020 -
“While It’s Not About the Experience of Being Quarantined Per Se, It Taps into a Kind of Universal Experience”: Director Matt Wolf on His Moving Saga of Human Ambition, Spaceship Earth
“Theater engages the whole organism,” says Biosphere 2 Director of Systems Engineering William Dempster. “Movement, through emotion — [it] gives you insight into yourself. Building a foundation from which we could go on and do other projects.” Accompanying Dempster’s voiceover early in Matt Wolf’s engrossing and unexpectedly stirring documentary, Spaceship Earth, is black-and-white footage from the first public activity of John Allen’s band of “Synergists”: a traveling theater production called The Theater of All Possibilities. The artistic value of the production is indeterminate; seen in brief clips, it falls somewhere on the continuum between The Living Theater and an Allan […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 14, 2020 -
“People’s Relationships to Their Moms is Always Deep”: Director Rachel Grady on the Comedy Central Doc Call Your Mother
The latest film from the Academy Award-nominated team of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Call Your Mother is a laugh-out-loud love letter to one of the most universally defining figures in all of our lives. (That would be our moms.) Executive produced by Caroline Hirsch, the force behind legendary comedy club Carolines on Broadway and the New York Comedy Festival, the doc airs on Comedy Central on May 10th (Mother’s Day, naturally). Featuring a vast and eclectic array of interviews with famous funny folks — everyone from Awkwafina, to Tig Notaro, to Jim Gaffigan and Jo Koy discuss their mother’s […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 8, 2020 -
“A Time-Traveling Conquistador Confronting Modern Mexicans”: Rodrigo Reyes on His Tribeca and Hot Docs Selected 499
499, the fourth feature film from “25 New Face” alum Rodrigo Reyes, is an epic, enchanting road movie that travels seamlessly through time (a 500-year-old journey reenacted in the present day) and space (across Mexico, from coastal Veracruz to the nation’s capital — or what used to be called Tenochtitlán back when the Aztecs claimed it as their own). Cemented by Eduardo San Juan Breña’s gripping performance as a Spanish conquistador who finds himself washed up into the future and onto modern day Mexico’s shores, the film recreates the path taken by Hernán Cortez in his 1621 quest to conquer the […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 25, 2020
