The 33rd Hot Docs Festival (Toronto, April 23-May 3) will open with the world premiere of Canadian filmmaker Michelle Mama’s Antidiva: The Carole Pope Confessions and screen a total of 80 features and 35 shorts films from 51 countries.
Antidiva received funding in 2023 from the Hot Docs-Slaight Family Fund to support development and chronicles the life of the British-born queer rock icon Carole Pope, who blazed a trial in the 1970s and 1980s with new wave band Rough Trade as one of the first openly gay performers.
The festival’s Canadian Spectrum Competition selections include world premieres for Oscar-nominated director Kim Nguyen’s (War Witch) Saigon Story: Two Shootings In The Forest Kingdom about the connection between two families and photojournalist Eddie Adams’s iconic photograph ‘Saigon Execution’ in the wake of the Vietnam War; and Sébastien Trahan’s Code Of Misconduct, which focuses on an investigative journalist whose work leads to the trial of five professional ice hockey players charged with sexual assault.
International Spectrum Competition includes world premieres for Heidrun Holzfeind’s The 49th Year about an anarchist incarcerated since 1980 who reflects on his radical past; and Andrea Suwito’s A Distant Call, in which a remote Indonesian community reckons with modern faith.
The Made In Brazil showcase includes the world premiere of Solar Shadow about ancestral Indigenous astronomy from directors Hugo Haddad and Isadora Canela; and the international premiere of Mini Kerti’s Dona Onete – This Tiny Piece Of My Heart exploring the legacy of singer and composer Dona Onete who emerged as Brazil’s “Queen of Carimbó” in her seventies.
Among this year’s Hot Docs sections are Persister, which amplifies the voices of inspirational women and brings the world premieres of Nance Ackerman’s The Delivery Line about midwives helping mothers in dangerous circumstances; and Katia Café-Fébrissy INDIVISUM: Legacies Adrift, which looks at the impact of land inheritance disputes in Guadeloupe.
The new Digital Witnesses programme explores technology and surveillance and includes the international premieres of Valerie Veatch’s Sundance AI feature Ghost In The Machine, and Barbora Chalupová’s examination of sexual content creators in Virtual Girlfriends, which premiered last year in the Czech Republic’s Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival.
As previously announced, Special Presentations includes Berlinale selection The Ballad Of Judas Priest and Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize winner To Hold A Mountain.
The festival’s programming team under the aegis of executive director Diana Sanchez received 2,820 film submissions and have programmed 52 world and international premieres. Events includes post-screening Q&As, the Hot Docs Forum, and the Deal Maker pitch meetings.
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