Hot Docs, North America's largest documentaries festival, is currently underway, presenting some 170 documentaries from around the world during the eleven days from April 29 to May 9.
Highlights from the 2010 Hot Docs festival include:
- Freetime Machos (Finland, 2009). Filmmaker Mika Ronkainen follows his hometown's team of dedicated but inept rugby players as they strive to win enough games to stay in their league. They have trouble recruiting players, and finally invite a girl to join the team. But the film is less about winning at sports as it is about male bonding and the way working class Finnish men view the world around them.
- Joan Rivers - A Piece Of Work (USA, 2010). Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg directed this extraordinarily intimate biodoc about Joan Rivers. In the film, the famous and famously irreverent comedienne tells all about herself -- including her plastic surgery, relationship with her daughter, her ongoing struggle to stay young and relevant and her surprising sense of vulnerability. If you're a Joan Rivers fan, this film delight you. If you're not yet a Joan Rivers fan, this film will make you one.
- Ito - A Diary of an Urban Priest (Finland, 2009). Pirjo Honkasalo's fascinating documentary follows a young Japanese boxer who has retired from the ring to become a Buddhist priest, and takes to the darker regions of Tokyo's nightlife to search for the meaning of life. This visually stunning observational film slowly, quietly reveals the contradictory thoughts and feelings in Japanese Mind, and probes the depths of Japanese traditional and contemporary culture. The film puts you into a meditative state, and you feel that you're witnessing secrets.
- The Oath (USA, 2010) - Laura Poitras' film follows the disparate fates of two brothers, both formerly staunch Al Qaeda supporters and close associates of Osama bin Laden, who were both arrested after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. One brother, Salim Hamdan, is currently imprisoned at Guantanamo. The other brother, Abu Jamal, is now a taxi driver in Yemen. The film, which won best documentary at the 2010 Sarasota Film Festival provokes public consideration and debate about how the war on terrorism is being handled.
- 12th & Delaware (USA, 2010) - Award-winning filmmakers Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp) investigate America's most uncompromising battle between right to chose advocates and right to lifers. In Fort Pierce, Florida, an abortion clinic is located on 12th Street, and a pro-life center sets up directly across from it on Delaware Avenue. The two establishments have almost identical exteriors, and women who are seeking abortions sometimes mistakenly enter the right to life center, where they are greeted by Anne, who offers free ultrasounds and presents chilling facts about abortion. Across the street, Candace and her husband, who operate the abortion clinic, are trying to assure safety to the doctors who work with them and have to escort their clients across picket lines set up by pro-lifers. The film, for which Ewing and Grady had unprecedented access to both facilities, presents an unflinching look at an intractable societal war and the women caught in the crossfire.
The festival's outstanding full program also includes screenings of James Longley's Iraq In Fragments, Errol Morris' The Fog of War and other superb documentaries.
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