10 films we can't wait to see at Hot Docs 2024

What does the future hold for the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival? It's been a tumultuous year for the organization that holds the event. In March, just as this year's lineup was announced, festival programmers quit en masse. And earlier that month, Hot Docs president Marie Nelson said this year's festival could be its last. Pandemic shutdowns had landed the operation in a financial crisis, she said, and in its budget last week, the federal government passed over Hot Docs' appeal for funding.

The long-term forecast for the organization remains unclear, but in the meantime, there's something bright and wonderful on the horizon. The 31st edition of Hot Docs opens Thursday, April 25, and for 11 days, Toronto will be home to the largest documentary film festival in North America once more. The schedule isn't as expansive as in past years, but with 168 films, there's still a wealth of options to explore, and we at CBC Arts have eagerly circled these 10 features on our calendars. Here's what we're most excited to see.

Grand Theft Hamlet

The scene is London. The time is January 2021. And two theatre actors, Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen, have found themselves out of work and stuck at home. For a time, the pals distract themselves from the existential swamp that is the global pandemic by playing video games — Grand Theft Auto Online in particular — and while raiding and pillaging a bizarro Los Angeles, the duo hits upon a creative pivot that's a shade more compelling than a Zoom play. What if they staged a full-scale production of Hamlet inside the game? And what if Pinny Grylls (a veteran documentarian and Crane's partner) came along to capture it all? There would be technical challenges, of course. Slings and arrows — and the occasional rocket launcher. The pitch has all the promise of a classic movie plot: "Let's put on a show" while avoiding a drive-by massacre. 

But it seems there's even more to Grand Theft Hamlet than the premise would suggest. The film, which will have its Canadian premiere at Hot Docs, won SXSW's prize for best documentary feature when it debuted this March in Austin,Texas, and since then, it's earned raves for its humour, heart and innovative form. The entire doc was shot inside the game, and the cast only appears as avatars. It's a refreshing approach considering the decidedly uncinematic nature of just about everything we do on our screens, and as the COVID era made plain, so much of our lives plays out online. There are compelling ideas to explore in that realm too — never mind the question of how art can better capture our unfilmable digital age. What creative potential exists in the virtual spaces we haunt? Are online communities the solution to loneliness and isolation or is there an inherent friction there — in other words, do they detract from the relationships and responsibilities we have IRL? Why do we still care about Shakespeare for that matter? And on top of all that, why do people struggle to make something beautiful in a world designed for destruction and chaos (Grand Theft Auto, that is — but I suppose another interpretation could apply)?

— Leah Collins

Secret Mall Apartment

I love the mall. Or maybe it's that I love the idea of the mall — my memories of it. I remember blowing my grass-cutting money at the trading-card shop, the arcade, the gag gift store and, later, the head shop and record store. The food court was a Wild West for restless 13- and 14-year-olds, virtually lawless. It was there that I found a formative example of the public, the town square — but also a nightclub, a place to see and be seen. At an age when you're trying on identities, the mall was the marketplace for costumes, symbols and signifiers. And don't get me started on the architecture, singular yet placeless and forever imprinted on my brain. This is, I understand, a uniquely late-capitalist love letter to what's effectively a slick, climate-controlled mechanism to part you from your pesos — but it is nevertheless deeply felt.

Of course, there is no shortage of art, writing and media that sketches some of these same feelings about the mall, including its darker cultural vibrations and the institution's decline in recent years. I'm thinking of stuff like Molly Young's essay "Sweatpants in Paradise;" Pasha Malla's retail fever dream of a novel, Kill the Mall; #liminalspaces; the 1978 zombie classic Dawn of the Dead; and the documentary Jasper Mall, among others. But I'm hopeful about a new film on the subject. 

Secret Mall Apartment tells the story of eight Rhode Island artists who, when evicted from their homes, built a hidden apartment in the Providence Place Mall. They lived there for four years before they were discovered, filming everything along the way. In the usual story of displacement and gentrification that precedes shopping malls, theirs is an offbeat tale about the DIY spirit of stealing back from corporate powers. On top of that, I'm always game for a trip to the mall. 

— Chris Hampton

Pelikan Blue

If there are two subjects that will always pull me into a documentary — be it a feature film, miniseries, podcast, whatever — it's stories about the Cold War and stories about fraud. Pelikan Blue is both of those things. 

In the late 1980s to the early 1990s, the Iron Curtain fell, and the people of eastern Europe could finally explore the West freely — in theory. 

In reality, most of them couldn't afford it — until three young Hungarians realized the blue ink used for international train tickets made them really, really easy to forge. In Pelikan Blue, the trio gets a crash course in capitalism, launching a fake-ticket syndicate that becomes the target of a police investigation. 

Oh, and it's animated. The film is a post-Cold War caper cartoon about fraud! It's like if Hustle, The Americans and the Adult Swim lineup had a baby, except it's a real story. I have never been so stoked for a documentary in my life.

— Chris Dart

Wilfred Buck

Early in the documentary, Wilfred Buck describes himself as being born of "partially civilized, colonized, displaced people — trained and shamed." He says those words rhythmically, speaking over rock music. It's an unflinching and poignant statement, and from that moment, it's abundantly clear that we are not about to hear from your average scientist.

Cree Elder Wilfred Buck is an Indigenous cosmologist. He's a teacher of ancestral knowledge that was almost lost through colonization — wisdom he is actively working to reclaim and disseminate.

By weaving together stories from Buck's life, including his troubled past, Anishinaabe writer-director Lisa Jackson has made a documentary that lives and breathes. Buck was separated from his family during the Sixties Scoop and he struggled with addiction as a teen. But the film also captures his hopeful ruminations about the future. The result is a story that exists everywhere, every time, all at once. The documentary is shot beautifully and set to an eclectic soundtrack, and it shifts seamlessly between archival footage and cinematic re-enactments. It's a masterful blending of styles and genres, woven together in a cohesive and compelling narrative tapestry. 

This doc is a wild and thoughtful ride that shows the knowledge of our ancestors will never be lost as long as we are looking in the right places.

— Lucius Dechausay

Teaches of Peaches

Anyone who was lucky enough to experience the Teaches of Peaches Anniversary Tour in 2022 knows it was an absolutely legendary event. (I easily count it among the 10 greatest live shows I've seen.) The tour marked the 20th anniversary of Peaches's landmark album of the same name, and it was the ultimate celebration of a queer icon. 

Now, thanks to a new documentary, those who couldn't score tickets — or who want to experience it again — are getting a second chance. Directed by Philipp Fussenegger and Judy Landkammer, Teaches of Peaches weaves archival material with footage from the aforementioned tour to paint an intimate portrait of Peaches in all her fearless, flawless glory.

— Peter Knegt

Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story

The late great Jackie Shane was undoubtedly a trailblazing icon, and it is wonderful that her legacy is finally being recognized. In 2022, she was the subject of a new Heritage Minute, and then in 2023, a plaque was unveiled at the start of Toronto Pride honouring her contribution to the Toronto music scene and Canada's LGBTQ history. 

Now, Shane is getting the documentary treatment. With Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story, filmmakers Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee (alongside co-executive producer Elliot Page) offer us the full, extraordinary story of Shane's rise to become one of music's first Black trans performers. Blending animated re-enactments with newly released phone conversations, the documentary will hopefully go a long way in ensuring as many people as possible are aware of just how monumental Shane was.

— Peter Knegt

Disco's Revenge

Disco never actually died. That's the underlying thesis of Disco's Revenge. 

Yes, the genre was the victim of a late '70s backlash — a racist and homophobic response to a scene steeped in Black and gay liberation. And unquestionably, disco also suffered serious self-inflicted wounds: its sudden popularity spawned a slew of poorly conceived and executed novelty records. Around the same time, established artists began pivoting to disco in an attempt to remain relevant. 

Disco might have been maimed, but it definitely survived. In fact, the last 40 plus years of pop music are deeply indebted to disco. The genre's influence is all around us, and the filmmakers of Disco's Revenge believe it's more relevant than ever.

I hope you're sitting down for this: the documentary features interviews and performances from Nile Rodgers and Chic, Billy Porter, Nona Hendryx and Labelle, Grandmaster Flash, Fab Five Freddy, Nicky Siano, Earl Young and the Trammps, Jellybean Benitez, Kevin Saunderson, Sylvester, Martha Wash and more. And more! You could have stopped that list at any point and I would have been like, "Yeah, I'm in."

— Chris Dart

Mighty Jerome

One of the Hot Docs screenings I'm most anticipating is a film that is over a decade old. But Mighty Jerome is as relevant today as it was when it was first released. 

Directed by the late great filmmaker Charles Officer — whose career will be celebrated at the screening — Mighty Jerome is the story of Harry Winston Jerome, a track prodigy who set multiple world records. Shot in black and white, it's a monochromatic film that paints a vivid portrait of a Black athlete, a man whose quick strides on the track impelled Canadians to address overt racism — something Jerome and his family faced in sport and life.  

First released by the NFB in 2010, the documentary is a testament to the provocative, empowered and gentle storytelling that permeates Officer's films. It's a poetic biography that tells one of the greatest comeback stories in Canadian track-and-field history. And while it's a tale of glory, there's also unexpected loss. In 1982, at just 42, Jerome died of a brain aneurysm. 

Officer himself died last year at the age of 48, and at the screening, Hot Docs will be showing excerpts from an interview with him shot in 2022, said to be his last. It will be interesting to revisit the doc and spend time with two Black giants of different industries — men whose legacies will forever be intertwined with this film.

— Lucius Dechausay

A Mother Apart

I first heard about this film in 2018, when filmmaker Laurie Townshend was developing the project for Toronto's Oya Media Group. At the time, she was following the lives of four women whose activism informed their approach to motherhood. These were mothers on the front lines of radical change who deeply understood the immense responsibility of raising children who would, hopefully, not grow up in the same systems of oppression that they did. (As if parenting wasn't already hard enough.) 

Eventually, Townshend came to focus on one subject: the artist Staceyann Chin. Chin's story — and her complicated relationship with her mother — is the heart of A Mother Apart. 

Chin was born on Christmas Day 1972, and her mother left before she was even one month old. They reconnected briefly when she was nine and then not again until Chin was in her 20s. The abandonment had an impact on her that would be unfathomable to most, but Chin channelled any feelings of pain, anger and resentment into her art. She became a critically acclaimed dub poet who has been on 60 Minutes and Def Poetry Jam. She even appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to share her experience as a gay Jamaican woman.

While her poetry is ferocious in its rawness and approach, it is her candour and vulnerability that keep you invested in the film's journey. In the doc, as an adult, she tries to reconnect with her mother. As a parent herself, she looks back at her own mother's choices with new-found perspective, sympathy and humility.

Mothering is deeply hard and there is no single right path, but I can't wait to see how Chin navigates the experience with her daughter at her side, searching for the answers she's been asking her whole life.

— Lucius Dechausay

A Photographic Memory

When director Rachel Elizabeth Seed was just 18 months old, her mother died. Sheila Turner-Seed was a journalist and, like her filmmaker-photographer daughter, she loved the camera. About 15 years ago, Rachel discovered an archive of her mother's interviews, including an educational audio-visual series called Images of Man. In it, Sheila interviewed some of the world's greatest photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lisette Model and Bruce Davidson. It was the first time since Rachel was a baby that she'd heard her mother's voice. The discovery sent the director deeper into her mom's archives. 

In her documentary, A Photographic Memory, Rachel retraces her mother's footsteps, interviewing Sheila's famous subjects in an attempt to learn about the woman she never got to know. The project treads the tender, complicated ground between the stories we tell about ourselves and our families and how those narratives relate to the pictures we hold. It all makes you think about the record we leave in this world — all the things that say "I was here." 

I don't know if it's because I'm a new dad, because I'm a journalist, because I've inherited a special reverence for the family photo album or because I am just prone to the sentimental, but let me tell you, I cannot get through this trailer without welling up.

— Chris Hampton

Adrianne & the Castle

Once upon a time in small-town Illinois, there lived a couple named Alan and Adrianne St. George. For more than 30 years, they lived on a hill, transforming a turn-of-the-century house into a palace, an estate they dubbed Havencrest Castle. The pair added lavish rooms and gardens and even a grotto fit for a goddess, designing not just a home, but also a monument to their love — a romance that first blossomed in their teens. But every love story eventually turns bittersweet, and in 2006, Adrianne died, leaving Alan alone at Havencrest. And in the years since Adrianne's death, Alan has opened the castle as a seasonal tourist attraction, which is how its story reached filmmakers Shannon Walsh and Laurel Sprengelmeyer. 

What is this incredible place? Who were the outrageous souls who dared to build it? And how in the world did they buy enough plaster and velvet to pull it all off? The story of Havencrest could produce dozens of feature-length films, I'm sure, but Walsh doesn't spend her time investigating the St. Georges' past. 

Instead, there's another question the film is more interested in chasing, namely what happens when a person loses their greatest love and greatest passion? Walsh, an acclaimed documentarian who received the Governor General's Award in 2023, appears in conversation with Alan throughout the doc, lending the film a distinctly meta feel. Together, they discuss how they're going to tell his story. What's the best way to represent Adrianne and Alan's memories of their life together? It's a process that culminates in a surprising final act: a montage of home videos, costumed performers and original music by Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire. The result is part documentary, part surreal artistic response — and wholly captivating.

— Leah Collins