Hot Docs ’17: Resurrecting Hassan

May 6, 2017Posted in****/****, 2017, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Chile, Disability, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs, Hot Docs 2017
****/****directed by Carlo Guillermo Proto Hot Docs, the Canadian International Documentary Festival, runs April 27-May 7, 2017 at Toronto's Bloor Cinema. Visit the fest's official site for more details. by Bill Chambers Denis Harting, his childhood sweetheart Peggy, and their daughter Lauviah busk together as a capella singers on the Montreal metro. Peggy prefers performing outside to inside: "It's more fun and it's more money. And people are a bit goofier." She says this to her secret boyfriend, Philou, during one of their transatlantic phone calls, which she's becoming increasingly brazen about. If you're going to pity Denis, pity him…

Hot Docs ’17: Recruiting for Jihad

May 3, 2017Posted in2017, Authors: Bill Chambers, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs, Hot Docs 2017, Norway
Making Jihadists***½/****directed by Adel Khan Farooq & Ulrik Imtiaz Rolfsen Hot Docs, the Canadian International Documentary Festival, runs April 27-May 7, 2017 at Toronto's Bloor Cinema. Visit the fest's official site for more details. by Bill Chambers There's a popular film and TV trope that's become a Twitter meme where a freeze-frame of someone in a compromising position is accompanied by a record-scratch on the soundtrack and a narrator intoning, "Hey, that's me. You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation." So it's cringeworthy when a new movie opens like this (even sans record-scratch), yet Recruiting for Jihad…

Hot Docs ’17: 69 Minutes of 86 Days

May 1, 2017Posted in2017, Authors: Bill Chambers, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs, Hot Docs 2017, Norway
**/****directed by Egil Håskjold Larsen Hot Docs, the Canadian International Documentary Festival, runs April 27-May 7, 2017 at Toronto's Bloor Cinema. Visit the fest's official site for more details. by Bill Chambers Following a flow of Syrian refugees from Greece to Sweden, 69 Minutes of 86 Days is formally unusual but sentimental in a way that feels very familiar. Director Egil Håskjold Larsen's (for all intents and purposes) invisible Steadicam cruises a tent-lined port in Greece, an eye-level drone looking for a muse. Roughly eleven minutes into the picture, there she is: Lean, an adorable tyke who comes to exert…

Hot Docs ’17: Ask the Sexpert

April 29, 2017Posted in2017, Authors: Bill Chambers, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs, Hot Docs 2017, India
***/****directed by Vaishali Sinha Hot Docs, the Canadian International Documentary Festival, runs April 27-May 7, 2017 at Toronto's Bloor Cinema. Visit the fest's official site for more details. by Bill Chambers This is a breezy, lighthearted documentary that nevertheless had me on pins and needles from the moment it introduced an antagonist. Former gynaecologist Dr. Mahinder Watsa, the eponymous "sexpert," is India's answer to Dr. Ruth. At 91, he writes a popular advice column for the MUMBAI MIRROR and continues to see patients as a sex therapist, sometimes off the street without an appointment--to the consternation of his children, who…

Hot Docs ’17: Hobbyhorse Revolution

April 27, 2017Posted in2017, Authors: Bill Chambers, Documentary, Film Festivals, Finland, Hot Docs, Hot Docs 2017
***/****directed by Selma Vilhunen Hot Docs, the Canadian International Documentary Festival, runs April 27-May 7, 2017 at Toronto's Bloor Cinema. Visit the fest's official site for more details. by Bill Chambers Hobbyhorsists. They are predominantly young women, tweens and teens alike, who pretend to ride broomstick horses. The horses have names, idiosyncrasies, even lifespans (in a poetic externalization of personal growth, one girl's closet seems to double as a mausoleum for hobbyhorses), and they're billed alongside their riders in dressage tournaments that are surreal spectacles of girls bunny-hopping over fences while the crowd watches on tenterhooks, the way you dread…

Hot Docs ’17: Living the Game

April 26, 2017Posted in2017, Authors: Bill Chambers, Documentary, Film Festivals, Hot Docs, Hot Docs 2017, Japan
**½/****directed by Takao Gotsu Hot Docs, the Canadian International Documentary Festival, runs April 27-May 7, 2017 at Toronto's Bloor Cinema. Visit the fest's official site for more details. by Bill Chambers In surveying a complementary milieu with the same elegant reserve, Living the Game could be a blood relative of the streaming favourite Indie Game: The Movie. Although its chill vibe doesn't feel entirely forthcoming in the age of Gamergate, the pro gamers it profiles may exhibit fewer chips on their shoulders because they all hail from the East (Japan, mostly) rather than the West. These folks are damn near…