Hot Docs 2021

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.

Honigmann’s journey into her past finds room for humour and compassion as well as tears and frustration, but ultimately helps weave together a generous and life-affirming, and rather special, film.

Copenhagen-based sales and aggregation outfit LevelK has acquired world sales rights for the Colombian documentary feature On the Other Side, selected for Hot Docs, about two brothers’ search for the FARC guerrillas who kept their mother hostage for 2 years.

“After enduring the extraordinary difficulties of this past year, the upcoming conference seeks to embrace the opportunities that lie within and inspire the community to re-imagine documentary’s role in our quickly evolving world, based on principles of social justice and equity,” say event organisers.

It isn’t the typical school run, at least as understood by pushy parents in the west. Kids on their way to class in Mohamed El Aboudi’s new documentary School Of Hope (international premiere: Hot Docs’ Spectrum Competition) walk or cycle or ride on donkeys for many miles across the desert.

Weits’ detailed and absorbing film has all of the elements for debate, controversy and angst as she delves into the diaries of her long-revered great grandfather hailed as one of the heroic pioneers of Israel.

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.

There is an old brothel in Seville close by one of the city’s busiest highways. Now, the building has been turned into a refugee centre. This is where the subjects of Juan Antonio Moreno Amador’s effervescent new documentary Welcome To Spain have come to build themselves new lives. The director explains more…

Kluijfhout’s meditative film serves up both stunning visuals and gentle lyric in telling the story of six very different people all motivated by their affection for, and connection to, the oyster.

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.