Hot Docs 2021

The British tourist had got his calculations wrong. His plan had been to dive into the hotel swimming pool from a high window. Instead, he landed headfirst on the concrete surrounding the pool. A hotel worker was left to clear up the blood. The director gets equally stuck in with BDE...

Finnish director Suvi West didn’t just want to tell the story of the mistreatment of Sámi people in Finland - she felt the need to tell it, she explains to Business Doc Europe. “I felt like I didn’t have any other choice,” she underlines of her film selected for the Hot Docs/EFP Changing Face of Europe programme.

It’s not the typical package holiday but when the opportunity arose for Finnish tourists to travel to Benin in West Africa as volunteers for a new vaccine study to counter diarrhoea in the region, there was no shortage of takers. Finnish director Mia Halme went with them to document the results.

It is a strange combination of projects to tackle side by side: the horror of Utøya and the blissful, escapist music of Norway’s favourite pop band, A-ha. Director Aslaug Holm discusses how she juggled the two projects, and also how they in some ways overlap.

She is Australia’s ‘Queen of Honky Tonk,’ a country singer with a voice as powerful as that of the great Loretta Lynn. And her private life is as turbulent as that of any country music star too, explains director Matthew Walker of his I’m Wanita, which documents the great woman’s long awaited arrival in Nashville, the home of country.

Greek director Angelos Tsaousis’ obsession with documentary began during his childhood when he used to watch National Geographic films on battered old VHS tapes. “I was fascinated by this form of storytelling,” he tells BDE. “I was fascinated by the fact of travelling, meeting new cultures in those remote areas and exploring our world.”

Like its main characters, Faith and Branko is a documentary as much British as it is Serbian. It not only fluctuates between cultures, but also between the professional and the personal through the portrait of muso couple Faith Elliott and Branko Ristic, as well as between the positions of outsider and insider. The filmmaker tells all to BDE.

It's a marriage made on two continents and a film put together across multiple time zones. A Marriage: Love In The Time Of The Internet (a world premiere in Hot Docs) is the new documentary by Czech director Kateřina Hager, made in collaboration with Emmy award winning Pakistani director Asad Faruqi. Hager bonds with BDE.

Directed by Luca Lucchesi and produced by Wim Wenders, A Black Jesus poses a poignant and highly pertinent question. How can the residents of a Sicilian village worship the statue of a black Jesus but disregard the refugees who pray in the same church? The filmmaker talks to BDE.

Like many other Georgian citizens, Salomé Jashi was startled to see images of a gigantic tree floating down the Black Sea. It was on its way to the home of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire former Prime Minister of Georgia, who wanted it for his garden. Director Jashi branches out with BDE.