“Mission accomplished.” That might have been the motto of the 2013 edition of CPH:DOX. If, at one point, this doc festival’s liberal definition of “reality” roiled nonfiction traditionalists (it was the fest, after all, that gave its 2009 top award to Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers), those days are long since gone. As BBC Storyville’s commissioning editor Nick Fraser commented at a panel on hybrid journalism, there’s almost an expectation by contemporary audiences that documentaries today — not just at CPH:DOX but everywhere — will play with concepts of truth and fiction. “Is there anything left of the tradition of objective […]

Montreal is a city lousy with festivals — even the harsh winter temperatures can’t seem to keep them away. Upon landing in town to attend Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal (RIDM) this November, two music festivals had representatives waiting at the airport, eager to claim me as one of their own. The documentary film festival, founded in 1998 just a few years after the birth of that other, perhaps better-known Canadian nonfiction extravaganza Hot Docs, has carved out a niche for itself, developing an audience eager for documentaries in the vein of their Toronto counterparts. Screenings and panels were […]