The Tribeca Film Festival has a history of showing tremendous new environmental documentaries, and this year the stand-out film in this area is Kate Brooks’ The Last Animals, a gut-wrenching investigation into the illicit ivory and rhino horn trade around the globe. When seen in conjunction with the short virtual reality piece The Protectors, which also features the rangers at Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this feature-length doc shines a new light on an issue that is not as far from home as many North American viewers may suspect. At its world premiere screening last week the […]
by Randy Astle on Apr 27, 2017The 17th annual Hot Docs Forum kicked off Tuesday in Toronto with all the pomp and ceremony of a high school model UN tournament. Axel Arno, SVT commissioning editor and one of three forum moderators, laid out the rules: each team will have seven minutes to pitch, followed by another seven minutes of question-and-answer discussion; the bell will ring once at the six-minute mark and twice at the seven-minute mark. Over two days, 20 producing teams pitched projects while 20-odd commissioning editors, broadcasters and video-on-demand reps sat at the table giving their feedback while other financiers and gatekeepers, most notably […]
by Whitney Mallett on May 5, 2016