Hot Docs 2021

National Film Board of Canada presents four world premieres exploring themes of identity and human rights by Indigenous, LGBTQ2+ and women film creators. The new docs (two features, two shorts) are by Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams, Sheona McDonald and Courtney Montour.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

The Turkish/Norwegian director talks to Business Doc Europe about the force of nature that is Seyran Ateş, lawyer, author, feminist, female imam and social campaigner and now the subject of a feature doc competing in Nordic:Dox Award Competition, Seyran Ateş: Sex, Revolution & Islam.

“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.