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Acid Forest
An ancient pine forest, decimated by the toxic defecations of a booming cormorant population, is the backdrop of an uncanny commentary on environmental change and migration that swings between hilarious, horrifying and Hitchcockian.
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Advocate
As one of the few Israeli human-rights lawyers willing to defend Palestinians, Lea Tsemel has been defying hostility and vitriol from the public and press for nearly 50 years to fight for clients in a stacked system.
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After Parkland
This devastating chronicle meets with students and families in the aftermath of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School as they reckon with unthinkable loss and search for new meaning.
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Alla Salute
Just as his career takes off, a food TV personality receives a shocking cancer diagnosis. When his chef friends offer to cook the foods he craves, a quintessentially Italian search for happiness—somewhere between eggplant parmesan and wine—begins.
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Always in Season
The unresolved case of a Black teen found hanging from a swing set in North Carolina in 2014 is the lens through which this searing doc examines the lingering trauma of more than a century of lynching and continued racial violence.
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American Factory
When an abandoned General Motors factory in Ohio is reopened by a Chinese billionaire, the local blue-collar employees clash with modern Chinese innovations in this new work co-directed by this year's Outstanding Achievement Award recipient Julia Reichert.
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Amussu
When a Moroccan silver mine begins to siphon and pollute local aquifers, villagers occupy the water pipeline and refuse to leave. Seven years later, they remain in their ingenious solar-powered camp, weathering arrests and intimidation while waiting for divine justice.
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Anbessa
Displaced from their farm, a mother and her precocious 10-year-old scavenge on the outskirts of Ethiopia's capital. When encroaching condominiums further threaten them, the youngster taps into the fierce power of his own imagination to battle forces beyond his control.
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Animal Magnetism Shorts Program
This collection of shorts reveals the push/pull, love/hate, friend/food tension that pervades our interactions with the creatures we raise as livestock, hunt for sport, keep as pets and see as a reflection of ourselves.
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Animus Animalis (A Story about People, Animals and Things)
Under glass cases, fake foliage and artificial snow, animals are always watching in this complex exploration of the work of taxidermists, hunters, farmers and museum workers, who erase the line between real and artificial, living and dead, kindness and cruelty.
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Ask Dr. Ruth
After helping the world find the clitoris, does 90-year-old sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer have anything left to teach us? This revealing look at a true trailblazer will have you assuming new emotional positions and reaching surprising climaxes…non-sexually speaking.
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Assholes: A Theory
Inspired by the NYT bestselling book, this lively philosophical investigation into the rise of asshole behaviour across the world asks: What does it mean to be an asshole, and more importantly, how do we stop their proliferation?
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Backstage Action
They don't have a name, a role or a voice, yet their onscreen presence is essential. In this insightful and skilfully crafted observational documentary, film extras finally come into focus to transcend their clichés.
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Beauty and Decay
Famed for guarding the doors of legendary Berlin techno club Berghain, stone-faced bouncer Sven Marquardt is also a gifted and expressive photographer who captured East Berlin's '80s punk scene in striking black-and-white portraiture.
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Because We Are Girls
Haunted by a childhood secret, courageous Indo-Canadian sisters from small-town British Columbia finally face their abuser in court, exposing how their rigidly sexist upbringing—reinforced even by the Bollywood films they loved as girls—conditioned them as victims.
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Behind the Shutters
The poetic musings of the director, who moved into her grandmother's house while pregnant with her first child, offer a visually enchanting reverie about memory, women's bodies and the difficulties of intergenerational understanding.
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Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World
As governments grow unreliable and traditional news sources decline in relevance and reach, follow a vigilante investigative journalist collective that uses cutting-edge tech and crowdsourcing to expose the truth behind the stories flooding our newsfeeds.
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Beloved
Shot in glorious colours in the mountains of Northern Iran, this portrait of an 82-year-old female cowherd captures the sublime independence and profound isolation of a life well lived on the rugged fringes of the world.
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Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint
Over a century after her first boldly colourful painting, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint is finally taking her rightful place in history as a pioneer of abstract art—but why has the art world been so reluctant to recognize her?
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Big Ideas presented by Scotia Wealth Management: Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind
One of Canada's most beloved musical icons joins Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind directors Joan Tosoni and Martha Kehoe to share stories about his unparalleled career, his inspired songwriting and his connection to Toronto, the city that loves him back.
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Big Ideas presented by Scotia Wealth Management: Human Nature
Meet celebrated biochemist and leading figure in the "CRISPR revolution" Jennifer Doudna, director Adam Bolt and executive producer Dan Rather, as they discuss breakthroughs in genetic engineering and what these mean not only for the future of medicine and disease, but for the evolution of humanity itself.
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Big Ideas presented by Scotia Wealth Management: The Rest
Ai Weiwei, celebrated contemporary artist, activist and director of The Rest, discusses the plight of refugees in Europe trapped between a disintegrating humanitarian aid system and intensifying nationalism, and his mission to ensure their stories be heard.
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Big Ideas presented by Scotia Wealth Management: Toxic Beauty
Whistleblower Deane Berg, along with Dr. Daniel Cramer of the Harvard Cancer Center and Dr. Ami Zota of George Washington University, join Toxic director Phyllis Ellis to discuss the public heath risks of the beauty products we use daily and the explosive lawsuit that's bringing them to light.
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Big Ideas presented by Scotia Wealth Management: Willie
In 1958, Willie O'Ree broke the colour barrier in hockey and went on to become an inspiration for generations of players. He joins Willie director Laurence Mathieu-Leger and some very special guests to discuss his remarkable life and career and his dedication to eradicating racism in the sport he loves.
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Bojayá: Caught in the Crossfire
Through the eyes of a survivor of one of the worst massacres in the 50-year conflict between the Colombian military and FARC guerillas, discover the darker reality that lingers beneath the veneer of recent peace talks.
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The Book of the Sea
From the critically acclaimed Russian-Indigenous director comes a breathtakingly cinematic film that weaves rich animation of Inuit folklore within a vérité tale of traditional whale hunters on the Bering Strait’s isolated west coast.
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Born in Evin
After discovering she was born in one of Iran's most notorious torture prisons, and with her mother refusing to speak, the filmmaker sets off to find answers from anyone willing to break decades of silence.
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Buddha in Africa
In this case study of China's expanding influence in Africa, a Malawian boy raised in a Chinese Buddhist orphanage, torn between his heritage and upbringing, teeters on the brink of a decision that will change his life forever.
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Buddy
Master documentarian Heddy Honigmann turns her eye for authenticity and genuine interview to the complex relationships between service dogs and their owners. Witness canine humanity and life-altering trust at work in this observational marvel.
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Butterfly
Surviving a broken home on the roughest streets of Naples, an 18-year-old girl spectacularly rises to become Italy's first female Olympic boxer. But when the spotlight fades after the 2016 Rio Games, is she strong enough to fight for herself?
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Campo
Shot on a massive military base just outside Lisbon, this award-winning essay juxtaposes army training drills with bucolic vignettes, building to a sharp reflection on the vain human impulse to control life and death.
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Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary
The late Pepita Ferrari seats 33 leading documentarians—from the iconic Alanis Obomsawin to iconoclast Werner Herzog—in front of the camera to delve into the unique challenges and ethical entanglements of documentary filmmaking.
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Cavebirds
Intrigued by her aging father's return to rural Malaysia to launch an edible bird nest farm, a Montreal filmmaker follows him seeking answers and instead discovers truths about home and heritage that help bridge the gap between them.
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Cold Case Hammarskjöld
Was it accident or assassination when a UN Secretary General's plane crashed en route to peace talks for the Congo Crisis? In this probe into the 1961 tragedy, sinister new evidence draws the director into a discovery more horrific than he imagined.
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Confucian Dream
An aimless young wife and mother in China discovers Confucianism and becomes a zealous convert, intent on planting a seed in her impressionable four-year-old and resistant husband—but will her new values die on the vine?
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A Conversation with Ai Weiwei and Fen Wang
Artist, activist and filmmaker Ai Weiwei, with film editor Fen Wang, joins us for a conversation about his work as a documentary filmmaker and the importance of activism and advocacy in his art. Hosted by Sook-Yin Lee.
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Conviction
Dreaming of a society that empowers rather than jails the marginalized, a group of incarcerated women in Canada joins forces with an advocacy organization, determined to author their own stories and rebuild their communities from the inside out.
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The Corporate Coup D'État
Piercing insights from journalist Chris Hedges and philosopher John Ralston Saul dissect America at a troubling crossroads, exposing Trump's MAGA doctrine as a symptom of a broken democracy where power now lies with corporations, not citizens.
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Daddy and the Warlord
Haunted by her father's secretive past, a journalist goes on a challenging journey through postwar Liberia to uncover his ties with infamous war criminal Charles Taylor, and risks shattering forever his image as her hero.
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The Daughter Tree
In this evocative study of gender in India, where a cultural preference for baby boys has forced a seismic population imbalance, villages cope with their male surpluses and a midwife fearlessly advocates for unborn girls.
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Daymohk
Under the weight of Russian imperialism, a traditional Chechen dance company is caught between honouring the republic's warrior history and currying the favour of a newly installed pro-Russian political leader.
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Dear Brother
After a tragic car crash leaves his brother catatonic, a man strives to tether his sibling to life through a one-sided dialogue of music, videos and touch that deepens their bond and reveals the profound mutual value of caregiving.
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Dicktatorship: Macho Made in Italy
Frustrated by the macho culture that continues to dominate Italian life, the cheeky filmmakers of the acclaimed Italy: Love It or Leave It challenge misogyny, chauvinism and sexism in a country famous for its curious of mix of dictators and Latin lovers.
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The Disappearance of My Mother
Now in her 70s, Italian fashion model Benedetta Barzini hates the camera's oppressive gaze. Fearful of her plan to "disappear," her son begins to mercilessly film the cover-girl-turned-feminist-academic, forcing a most unusual confrontation between privacy and self.
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DocX at Autodesk
DocX is an interdisciplinary section of the Festival celebrating documentary work that lives outside the traditional format. This year, there are a number of free virtual reality and interactive experiences available at Autodesk Technology Centre.
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Drag Kids
Four precocious preteens perfect their lip synching and runway walks in anticipation of the biggest drag performance of their lives at Montreal Pride, in this fierce and joyous celebration of acceptance and self-discovery.
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Dying for Gold
Long-hidden archives finally expose how the South African gold mining industry, dependent on cheap labour coerced under colonial rule, sparked one of the world's largest epidemics of tuberculosis and silicosis.
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Easy Lessons
When a Somali child bride flees to Hungary, she embraces the upheaval with impressive composure—learning the language, embarking on a modelling career and converting to Christianity—all while struggling to stay connected to her distant family.
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The Edge of Democracy
Featuring unprecedented access to former Brazilian presidents Dilma Rousseff and Lula da Silva, the personal and political brilliantly combine in this unflinching exploration of one of the most dramatic and polarizing periods in Brazilian history.
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The El Duce Tapes
The notorious frontman of shock-rock band The Mentors gained infamy in the '80s and '90s for donning black executioner hoods and spewing cartoonishly racist, homophobic and misogynistic lyrics—but was he propagating hate, or confronting it?
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El Toro
Romance and tragedy bind eight siblings who worked together in the '60s at their now-demolished family-run truck stop diner on the outskirts of Winnipeg. Rebuilt as a backdrop for this quirky hybrid doc, the diner infuses their charming story with a surreal nostalgia.
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Exodus
After years of being treated as expendable labour, thousands of Afghan migrants line up to leave Iran now that US sanctions have sparked a recession, but first they must endure the strange interrogations at an immigration centre in Tehran.
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Faire-Part
On the eve of postponed elections in the DRC, a team of Congolese and Belgian directors turn the lens on performance art as political protest, but the true subject is their efforts to interrogate the colonial history that divides them.
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Family Portrait in Black and White
In a country of blue-eyed blonds and an increasingly violent white supremacist movement, a Ukrainian foster mother struggles to raise 16 biracial orphans in a small town, exposing the contradictions between love and control, ideology and belonging.
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#Female Pleasure
In this rousing feminist primer, five women from around the world risk their lives to question the patriarchal barriers oppressing female sexual pleasure. From porn to art to advertising to religion, the true culprit of shame—misogyny—is exposed in all its forms.
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For Sama
Through tender video diaries, a young Syrian mother creates a time capsule for her baby daughter during the last days of the battle for Aleppo, capturing the enduring love of family in the most devastating of circumstances.
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Framing John DeLorean
Car design guru, genius entrepreneur or brilliant criminal—who was the real John DeLorean? Narrative recreations starring Alec Baldwin punctuate revealing interviews with the enigmatic automaker's inner circle to elegantly parse the man from the scandalous myth.
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Garden, Zoological
A small South Korean zoo provides haunting insight into how cramped enclosures and constant human intervention cause animals to lose their wild instincts. Are zoos a tool for conservation or incarceration?
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Gaza
Fully blockaded and home to almost two million people, the Gaza Strip is portrayed in the news as the world's largest open-air prison—but this rare immersion into everyday Palestinian life reveals the pressures of occupation and the humanity straining to flourish.
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Gods of Molenbeek
Growing up in Brussels' infamous Molenbeek district, a trio of curious six-year-olds grapple with oversized questions of religion and faith in a frightening adult world of subway bombings and police patrols.
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Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind
From a rural Ontario childhood to Greenwich Village of the '60s, stadium tours of the '70s and beyond, vivid archival footage helps chart the career of the legendary songwriter as he reveals the inspiration behind his lyrics and longevity.
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Growing Up Female
Considered to be the first film of the modern US women's movement, this landmark doc first screened to controversy and exhilaration, profiling a diverse group of six girls and women on what it means to come of age in America.
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The Guardian of Memory
The desperate stories of Mexicans fleeing state-sponsored violence toward the unwelcoming US border are revealed with striking visual poetry, alongside that of a famed immigration attorney who aids their quest for political asylum.
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A Haunted Past
In this solemn portrayal of a family broken by war, an embittered Tunisian father is left alone to raise his three teenage daughters after he is released from prison on charges of terrorism following the 1990s Bosnian War.
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Havana, from on High
Gorgeous cinematography and inspired soundscapes infuse this study of a decaying district in Havana, where chronic housing shortages force residents ever higher into rooftop homes—and into a bird's-eye view of a society in transformation.
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Haydee and the Flying Fish
Forty years later, a Chilean woman who was obscenely tortured under Pinochet's regime awaits a potentially historic court verdict and a chance to begin healing unimaginable wounds.
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Hi, AI
With artificial intelligence already in our homes and androids at our doorsteps, this poetic contemplation offers a challenging look at the new normal: robots that transcend gadgetry to assume intimate and indispensable roles in the everyday.
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Honeyland
A triple Sundance award-winner, this ravishing parable captures Europe's last female bee-hunter imparting her golden rule: take half the honey, but leave half to the bees. As interloping newcomers arrive in Macedonia, nature takes its devastating course.
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Hope Frozen
As scandal swirls around a grief-stricken Bangkok family and their unorthodox decision to cryopreserve their deceased two-year-old daughter, her ambitious whiz-kid brother is consumed with the effort to find the technology that will revive her.
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The Hottest August
Amid news of devastating wildfires and hurricanes, rising rents and white nationalist marches, anxious residents of New York City and its outer boroughs ponder an unpredictable and potentially catastrophic future during one steamy summer month.
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How Much Do You Love Yourself?
A young homeless woman in Slovenia, who's in love with history, her incarcerated husband and heroin, explores and squats in abandoned buildings where she can escape judgment, pursue her photography and create romance out of ruin.
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Human Nature
In a brave new world in which science fiction collides with fact and DNA sequences can be edited with ease, this provocative examination forces us to reconsider what it means to be human.
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Hunting for Hedonia
This fascinating doc follows the historic controversy and renewed enthusiasm over the burgeoning medical practice of deep brain stimulation, where tiny implanted electrodes have a remarkable effect on depression, addiction, stress disorders and more.
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The Hypnotist
In Cold War–era Finland, a famous hypnotist cultivated a wildly successful celebrity status—and didn't stop there. His audacious involvement in covert ops and high-level politics lands him in desperate straits in this meditation on the power of suggestion.
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I Had a Dream
Filmed over the last turbulent decade, this award-winning censure of Italian government traces the friendship between two bold female politicians who face off with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in 2007, but wind up fighting for democracy itself by 2018.
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I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth Vs. Michelle Carter
This two-part HBO docu-series dives past the headlines and into the ethical morass of the case of Michelle Carter, who faces the prospect of jail time after coercing her boyfriend into suicide via text, blowing open troubling questions of how we communicate in the digital age.
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"I Told My Mum I Was Going on an R.E. Trip…"
Fusing tough subject matter with wicked humour and inventive spoken word, this thought-provoking performative doc stages four young actresses playing interchangeable roles to recount real-life abortion experiences.
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Illusions of Control
From nuclear fallout to arsenic-contaminated drinking water, five women across the globe find the means to survive in an apocalyptic world decimated by human activity.
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IMAX Screenings at Ontario Place Cinesphere
Hot Docs pays tribute to two renowned Canadian IMAX creators, Toni Myers and Jonathan Barker, by screening two of their crowning achivements. Free and family friendly.
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In My Blood It Runs
Considered a promising leader by his elders but a failing student by his westernized school teachers, an Aboriginal boy in central Australia must straddle two worlds, coming of age in the midst of a larger cultural battle between colonizers and colonized.
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The Infiltrators
A group of courageous undocumented teenagers allow themselves to be apprehended and held in a secretive for-profit holding facility in Florida, where they mount a nail-biting bid to free fellow detainees awaiting deportation.
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Inga Can Hear
For a teenage girl living in the remote Latvian countryside, being the only hearing member of her family is both a gift and curse. When she shakes off responsibility and leaves home, she discovers more about herself than many bargained for.
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Inside Lehman Brothers
A cautionary tale for the ages and a grim portent of what may come again, this detailed autopsy of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis highlights the mainly female mortgage brokers and accountants whose whistleblowing fell on deaf ears.
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ISIS, Tomorrow. The Lost Souls of Mosul
Renowned journalists return to Mosul in search of the most dangerous weapon created by three years of ISIS occupation: children. Chilling interviews with radicalized and traumatized youths reveal how deeply the seeds of war are sown.
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A Kandahar Away
When a family originally from Kandahar, Afghanistan, buys land in the tiny hamlet of Kandahar, Saskatchewan, their journey to consider the potential of the Prairies reveals a generational divide and clashing ideas on what it means to be Canadian.
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Khartoum Offside
Fighting for their right to play soccer and one day compete at the FIFA Women's World Cup, a team of fearless Sudanese heroines clash with tradition, politics and religion on the field of their dreams.
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Kifaru
This emotionally devastating up-close account of extinction tracks the final years of the world's last male northern white rhino, which unfold under the eyes of the dedicated Kenyan rangers who care for and protect him until the very end.
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Killing Patient Zero
Skilfully revealing the homophobia behind the headlines, this doc traces the devastating impact of the 1980s AIDS epidemic and clears the name of the Québécois flight attendant who was infamously known as Patient Zero.
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Kings of Pastry
In this irresistible vérité confection, 16 pastry chefs from around the world face three days of back-breaking competition at the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France, creating fanciful, gravity-defying French patisserie under the scrutiny of meticulous judges. Bon appétit!
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Knock Down the House
This rollercoaster ride follows four progressive women—including Bronx bartender Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—behind the scenes and in the streets as they grind through long-shot grassroots campaigns for Congress during the 2018 US midterms.
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Last Breath
When a commercial diver is stranded hundreds of feet underwater with only five minutes of oxygen, his crew launches an eleventh-hour rescue mission in a ferocious storm. Told with incredible underwater access, this suspenseful story stares death in the face.
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Leftover Women
Fearful of being labelled "leftover"—a term for an urban, educated and unmarried woman in her late 20s—women in China must find a partner before they turn 27, or risk rejection from their own families.
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Letter to Theo
A love letter to the late Greek director Theo Angelopoulos becomes a profoundly moving essay on contemporary Greece: a country battered by an interminable economic crisis, yet still passionately fighting to preserve its dignity.
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Life Is a Belief
Although their paths may never cross, the lives of two men from Foshan, China mirror one another in their struggle for love and family. Facing separation, poverty and illness, their plights unfold side by side in this epic journey into the depths—and limits—of love.
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Limit is the Sky
Raging wildfires, tanking oil prices and anti-pipeline sentiments are just a few of the obstacles facing millennials working service jobs in boomtown Fort MacMurray, dreaming of making big bucks in the macho culture of Alberta's oil sands.
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A Lion in the House
This Emmy-winning, four-hour epic follows five children battling cancer over the course of six years. Filmed with unprecedented access to the Cincinnati Children's Hospital, it is an intense and deeply moving monument to human fragility and resilience.
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Long Time Comin'
Acclaimed writer Dionne Brand charts the work of two trailblazing Black lesbian Canadian artists—singer-songwriter Faith Nolan and multimedia visual artist Grace Channer—who discuss art, race and sexuality in this intimate tête-a-tête.
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Lord of the Toys
A 20-year-old in Germany collects hundreds of thousands of YouTube followers by way of cracking offensive jokes, getting drunk and humiliating others on video in this dystopian sketch of a generation who never knew the world without social media.
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Lourdes
Thousands converge daily on a tiny market town in southern France, each praying for their own miracle. In this clear-eyed look at one of the world's most important pilgrimage sites, raw hope and humanity merge with the theatre of religious tourism.
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Love Translated
In a poignant but fast-paced comedy of errors and exploitation, dreams clash with reality when 10 Western men seeking Ukrainian brides untainted by feminism take a tour in Odessa organized by an online dating site.
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The Magic Life of V
Armouring herself with a fairy-tale alter ego through live-action role play, a young woman cannot let go of memories of brutal childhood abuse until she's ready to step out of her elaborate fantasy world and face the real monster from her past.
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Making Believe Shorts Program
Is our perception of reality tethered to truth or lies? In a world marked by rising rates of mental illness and swayed by the expanding influence of internet trolls, fake news and sensational crime reporting, our instincts may be shifting from honesty to gullibility.
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Marceline. A Woman. A Century
This encounter with writer and filmmaker Marceline Loridan-Ivens teases out decades of her unconventional life and loves, from surviving Auschwitz as a girl to her romantic and creative partnership with acclaimed Dutch documentarian Joris Ivens.
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Marek Edelman... and There Was Love in the Ghetto
Tragically short lives grasp at fleeting love in this artful recreation of the engrossing Holocaust memoir of the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, offering a moving testament to the power of the heart.
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Massacre River
When over 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent are left stateless after the country rules their citizenship invalid, violence and unchecked xenophobia erupts, and one woman races to gain legal status to stay with her daughter before the clock runs out.
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Maxima
A multi-billion-dollar mining corporation would never suspect that one Peruvian subsistence farmer could bring them to their knees, but they meet their match in a fearless Indigenous woman who remains uncowed after years of violent intimidation.
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Memory - The Origins of Alien
On the 40th anniversary of Ridley Scott's iconic masterpiece, travel deep into interstellar space and through the minds of the artists that created one of the most haunting and visceral science fiction horror films of all time.
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Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen
Nine years after her death, a pioneering Maori filmmaker who paved the way internationally for Indigenous women in film is celebrated by her son and his siblings in this deeply moving tribute.
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Midnight Family
In this suspenseful vérité study of a broken system, take a bumpy ride along the streets of Mexico City with a working-class family as they race to save lives and carve out a place in the cutthroat for-profit ambulance industry.
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Midnight Traveler
When the Taliban puts a bounty on an Afghan director's head, he captures on camera his family's uncertain and dangerous quest for asylum in this account of the love shared between a family on the run.
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Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool
Never-before-seen footage and studio session outtakes reconstruct the rich inner life of one of the most influential jazz musicians of all time, along with new interviews from the artists he inspired, including Quincy Jones and Carlos Santana.
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The Miracle of the Little Prince
The Little Prince is the world's third most translated book. This visually magnificent film asks why, tracing the passionate work of translators who, through this much-beloved story, strive to keep endangered languages alive.
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Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements
The filmmaker ushers us through a poignant memoir of her deaf son growing up and her deaf father facing his twilight years, scored by the melancholy notes of Beethoven's iconic sonata, written when the composer's own hearing began to fail.
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Mr. Toilet: The World's #2 Man
An eccentric, passionate entrepreneur becomes an unlikely hero on a high-stakes mission: solving the dire global sanitation crisis. When his project to secure six million toilets for India is jeopardized, hundreds of thousands of lives hang in the balance.
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My Dads, My Moms and Me
Twelve years ago, Julia Ivanova captured the plight of four gay men confronting homophobic social censure to raise babies. Now, weaving in joyful scenes from her original film, she returns to see how these brave new families are faring.
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My Grierson
This Curious Minds–style illustrated talk features executive producer Bill Nemtin reflecting the lessons learned from his mentor, John Grierson, who founded the National Film Board of Canada some 80 years ago and whose philosophy on documentary as a tool for social change influences Canadian identity to this day.
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Mystify: Michael Hutchence
The enigmatic frontman of wildly popular Australian rock band INXS, who died tragically in 1997, is remembered by the women in his life, including revealing interviews with famous girlfriends Kylie Minogue and Helena Christensen.
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N. Scott Momaday: Words from a Bear
The life and career of Pulitzer Prize–winning Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday, one of Native America's most celebrated literary figures, is explored in this spiritual journey through the expansive landscapes of the West and New Mexico.
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nipawistamasowin: We Will Stand Up
A grieving family's pursuit of justice becomes a flashpoint of the inequity and racism in the Canadian legal system after the killer of Colten Boushie, a young Cree man in Saskatchewan, is acquitted of murder charges.
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Nothing Fancy: Diana Kennedy
Dubbed "the Mick Jagger of Mexican cooking," a 96-year-old firebrand chef who's spent her career celebrating the country's regional cuisines rushes to solidify her hard-earned legacy in the face of her own mortality.
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On the Inside of a Military Dictatorship
The world celebrated in 2015 when Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi was elected to power by a landslide in Myanmar. But can she build a democracy on the foundations of a brutal military dictatorship and entrenched ethnic discrimination?
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On The President's Orders
With unprecedented access inside President Duterte's war on drugs in the Philippines, this shocking exposé embeds cameras behind both the blue lines of a police kill squad in Manila and their targets, the ordinary families of the city's slums.
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One Child Nation
Through vérité footage and raw interviews, this fearless, Sundance Award–winning exposé unmasks the wrenching costs to millions of families of China's infamous 1979 "one-child policy," introduced to curb population growth and boost sweeping economic development.
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Our Dance of Revolution
Protest and passion ground this long-overdue look at Toronto's Black LGBTQ community, featuring a rousing oral history of struggle and triumph from four decades of local legends and freedom fighters.
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Our Godfather
The family of a high-ranking Sicilian mob boss comes out of 30 years of hiding to tell the gripping tale of how he helped convict over 400 Mafiosi—and became the most hunted witness in US criminal history.
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Our Time Machine
Before a Peking Opera director succumbs to Alzheimer's, his son seizes one last chance to connect, racing against time and fading memories to collaborate with him on a haunting and magical stage performance based on their lives.
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Persister Panel Discussion
Women's voices and stories from all over the world take centre stage in the Persister film program. What are they saying about the cultural, political and economic forces that undermine or uphold women's fight for equal rights and against gender-based violence? Where is Canada situated within the conversation?
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Persister Shorts Program
Women speak out from both sides of the camera against a culture that accepts men's abuse of power, patriarchy's control over female bodies, and the racist, sexist, sizeist and ableist beauty standards imposed on them.
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The Pickup Game
This provocative insider investigation exposes the secrets of the scandal-filled yet thriving pickup industry, where would-be Casanovas pay to be coached in the art of seduction.
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Picture Character
Explore the evolution of emojis, the colourful and creative pictorial language that surged from a simple set of icons to a swiftly evolving linguistic phenomenon that is reshaping how we communicate.
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Pipe Dreams
Converging on Montreal for the prestigious Canadian International Organ Competition, five talented young musicians from around the globe face off to master "the king of instruments," with their determination proving to be as moving as their artistry and skill.
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A Place of Tide and Time
The old guard of a remote fishing village in eastern Quebec fight for their traditional life and livelihood after the cod industry's collapse, while their teenage children embrace exile as their only chance at happiness.
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Prey
This riveting story of deceit, corruption and vindication follows a survivor of sexual abuse as he and his lawyer take on the Catholic Church in an Ontario court.
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Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies
Artists Kent Monkman, Shepard Fairey and Ai Weiwei highlight this cautionary tale about the power of persuasion. As the roots of indoctrination are traced from cave drawings through to presidential tweets, potent lies have never been better disguised.
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Prophecy
From first to last stroke of the paintbrush, watch Scottish painter Peter Howson's creative process unfold as he brings a massive canvas to life with an epic and apocalyptic work of art.
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A Punk Daydream
Pushed to society's fringes, young punks in Indonesia's capital drift through polluted urban landscapes in this gorgeous hybrid film, which subtly traces how their environmentalist ideals align with those of a local marginalized Indigenous people.
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Push
As skyrocketing housing prices and stagnant incomes squeeze families out of cities worldwide, a newly appointed UN specialist from Ottawa travels from Toronto to Barcelona to London and beyond, fighting to have affordable housing recognized as a human right.
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Quiet Storm: The Ron Artest Story
Following an infamous on-court brawl, Ron Artest became the most maligned athlete in sports. This distinctly American biography follows him from his childhood in Queens to his turbulent NBA years to his reinvention as inspiring mental health advocate Metta World Peace.
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Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project
For three decades, a reclusive activist meticulously recorded 24-hour news cycles every day until her death. Now uncovered, her archive of 70,000 VHS tapes reveals a subtle form of resistance and an obsession that nearly tore her family apart.
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Red Moon
At the age of nine, the director's aunt was abruptly whisked from Turkey to Belgium, and became a child bride just four years later. Now, both women trace the timeline of her shattered childhood to reclaim her stolen life.
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Redux Shorts: Five Feminist Minutes
In 1990, the National Film Board made waves with Five Feminist Minutes, a series of short films produced by the trailblazing Studio D, the world's first all-woman production unit. As the NFB celebrates its 80th anniversary, four contemporary directors pick up the thread, accompanied by four to-be-announced titles from the original series.
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Redux Shorts: Oscar-Winning Shorts
In 1974, Studio D became the first publicly funded feminist film production unit in the world. This program offers a bold collection of its Oscar-winning shorts, produced by studio founder Kathleen Shannon.
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The Reformist – A Female Imam
In Denmark, a strong-willed Muslim woman opens one of Europe's first mosques run by female imams, challenging both fundamentalism and Islamophobia with a staunch belief that only the wisest and most knowledgeable—regardless of gender—should be religious leaders.
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The Rest
From Chinese artist and political activist Ai Weiwei comes a powerful work that follows the daily lives of refugees in Europe as they hang in limbo between a disintegrating humanitarian aid system and intensifying nationalism.
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River Silence
As construction of one of the world's largest dams destroys the Amazon's ancient ecosystems and displaces tens of thousands, the filmmaker offers a potent and lyrical plea for those brutalized for the sake of rampant development.
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Rogers Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary
On the Festival's final night, join us to celebrate our Canadian filmmakers and to announce the winner for the $50,000 Rogers Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary, courtesy of the Rogers Group of Funds.
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Scheme Birds
A scrappy soon-to-be mother, burning with her generation's frustration at society's unrealized promises, struggles to find peace and a future in a fading Scottish steel town rife with gang violence.
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Sea of Shadows
While harvesting a rare fish in the Gulf of California, reckless poachers are also pushing the world's most elusive whale to extinction. Follow activists and undercover agents as they fight Mexican cartels and Chinese mafia in a heart-pounding race against greed.
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Seahorse
For a British trans man yearning for a child, the journey to conceiving is anything but straightforward. Through intimate access, experience this story of heartache, determination and love that illuminates what it truly takes to be a father.
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The Search
Decades after a bloody internal armed conflict in Peru that claimed nearly 70,000 lives, a former child soldier, a survivor and a young writer explore their experiences of loss and trauma—both firsthand and inherited—in this deeply empathetic journey.
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Searching Eva
Refusing to fix her own identity and career in permanence, the enigmatic protagonist of this thoroughly millennial character study proves through selfies, sex scenes and social media that online, you can be everything and nothing at once.
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Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists
Filmed at the height of Reaganism, this Oscar-nominated history of the Communist Party in America traces the roots of Social Security and EI, and went on to become one of the most widely screened docs of the '80s.
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The Seer and the Unseen
One of Iceland's most respected seers—thought to be able to communicate with the elvish realm—becomes a frontline ecological activist against development that threatens to devastate the countryside and the elves' sacred homelands.
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Shella Record – A Reggae Mystery
When a reggae fanatic unearths a record by a mysterious diva in a Toronto junk shop, his resulting musical obsession drives him on an increasingly desperate quest to Kingston, Jamaica, to track down the song's elusive singer.
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Shooting the Mafia
Racing from murder scene to murder scene on her Vespa, an indomitable photographer wages a one-woman war against the Sicilian mafia in the 1980s, exposing vicious crimes to help end their reign of fear.
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Some American Feminists
Weaving archival footage with interviews of key second-wave feminists, including Betty Friedan, Margo Jefferson, Kate Millett and Rita Mae Brown, this is a fascinating history of one of the 20th century's most consequential social movements.
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The Sound of Masks
A beautiful blend of archival and contemporary footage portrays one man's lifelong pursuit to preserve Mozambique's anti-colonial history through traditional dance, in a testament to the role of the arts in preserving Indigenous stories.
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Stieg Larsson: The Man Who Played with Fire
This compelling look at the Swedish journalist, whose The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series shot to wild posthumous fame, delves into his lesser-known but more significant contribution: fearlessly researching and exposing Neo-Nazism in his own country and beyond.
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Strip and War
Family bonds overcome the widest of generation gaps in this charming tale of a retired military officer stuck in a Soviet past who lives with his grandson, a former engineer who now pursues higher pay and job satisfaction as a stripper.
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Supreme Law
This live event hosted by comedian Jus Reign takes a uniquely interactive and satirical approach to the story of how the Canadian Constitution came to be, with the help of some of the country's biggest YouTube personalities and content creators.
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Symphony of the Ursus Factory
Once a symbol of the golden age of Soviet machinery production, a derelict Polish factory is brought back to life by former workers who take part in a choreographed experimental reenactment that culminates in a sumptuous tractor ballet.
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There Are No Fakes
When a celebrity buyer begins to doubt the authenticity of a painting by iconic Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau, he's drawn into the tragic web of an exploitative art forgery ring that quickly widens far beyond the canvas.
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To Share or Not to Share
A squash coach abandons his successful career in London to launch a barter-based community in Estonia, but his food co-operative and tantric "energy sessions" are met with growing skepticism by locals. Is his newfound ethos credible or come-on?
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Touching from a Distance II: Transmediations in the Digital Age
This exhibition presents recent digital works immersed into the bookshelves and media hardware at the Goethe Media Space, exploring the theme of transmediation: the process of translating a work into a different medium—analog or digital, written or visual.
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Toxic Beauty
Cancer, diabetes, developmental delays and more—the cosmetics industry's ugly secrets are exposed through exclusive interviews with scientists, whistleblowers and consumer survivors who raise pressing questions about the true cost of beauty.
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The Trial of Ratko Mladic
Accused of horrific war crimes, the "Butcher of Bosnia" finally faces a verdict in the biggest trial since Nuremberg. Embedded with both the prosecution and defense, this courtroom thriller reveals the troublingly nuanced Serbian–Bosnian conflict that still rages on.
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Trixie Mattel: Moving Parts
The half-Ojibwa drag queen, musician, comedian and TV personality—best known for snatching the crown in season three of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars—provides an all-access pass to the tour of her rollicking one-woman show.
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Una Primavera
When a woman finally leaves her 40-year abusive marriage, her filmmaker daughter begins a video diary of her emancipation. What emerges is a startling image of modern Italy, where cultural machismo still privileges "the family" above women.
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Union Maids
In this rousing chronicle of a defining moment in the American labour movement, three extraordinary women look back on the Depression-era trade unionist crusade, where they faced police brutality, sexism and racism, but never backed down.
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The Valley
As thousands of migrants attempt to cross the French-Italian border on foot through treacherous mountain routes, the state cracks down on the local communities that come to their aid in this revealing look at an unfolding human rights crisis.
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The Wandering Chef
In this heartwarming ode to family and the healing power of food, Korean celebrity chef Jiho Im mourns the death of a beloved maternal figure in the only way he knows how: cooking 108 delectable dishes over 24 hours.
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Well Groomed
Move over, Westminster Kennel; there's a more colourful dog show in town. Creative groomers—those who dye and sculpt dog fur into kaleidoscopic shades and shapes—face off in an irresistibly over-the-top contest circuit that will leave you howling.
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When I Shut My Eyes
Framed by a corrupt Mexican police force and denied an interpreter, two Indigenous inmates finally reveal in their own language the tragic story they couldn't tell a judge as they cling to vivid memories of their loved ones.
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When We Walk
Recently divorced, the filmmaker attempts to relocate closer to his young son, but confronts the harsh inequity of the US Medicaid system, which would prevent him from accessing the care he needs to live while battling advanced multiple sclerosis.
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Who Let the Dogs Out
The catchy hook of Baha Men's 2000 hit single asks an age-old question, and this hilariously earnest doc asks many more, taking a wild ride through eight years of a man's runaway obsession with the song and its much-disputed origins.
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Willie
In the midst of the American civil rights movement, Willie O'Ree became the first Black player to skate in the NHL. An inspiration to many, the remarkable story of this recent Hall of Fame inductee's courage and resilience transcends the sport.
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A Woman's Work: The NFL's Cheerleader Problem
Football and feminism collide as former cheerleaders file class-action lawsuits and face off with the multi-billion-dollar NFL corporation, alleging rampant wage theft, sexism and labour violations.
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Wongar
When one of his beloved dingoes falls gravely ill, a reclusive Serbian-Australian writer in Melbourne delves into painful memories and his life's work, revealing a personal tragedy that speaks to Australia's colonial past.
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The World or Nothing
Armed with a cellphone, a laptop and elaborate dance moves, determined twin brothers migrate from Cuba to Spain in pursuit of internet stardom in this tender look at millennial celebrity, brotherly love and the cost of realizing dreams.
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Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men
Through revealing, candid interviews and never-before-seen footage, get to know one of the most influential hip-hop groups of all time in the first two episodes of this upcoming Showtime docu-series.
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XY Chelsea
After her 35-year prison sentence is commuted by President Obama, former military intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning prepares to leave a military prison and transition to her new life as a free woman.
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Your Last Walk in the Mosque
After a lone gunman opens fire in a Quebec City mosque, killing six, the survivors and families of a community in shock come together to heal, sharing stories and honouring the lives of those who were taken from them.
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