Yesterday, the festival announced the bulk of its award winners – some of which I'd seen, some of which I'd heard great things about and some I'd admittedly heard/knew nothing about! I was pleased (an…
Well, despite my best intentions – and arriving at the Lightbox just before 11am – I was once again unable to score a ticket to yesterday's 3:30pm screening of Honeyland, as it had (once again) gone “…
It’s almost time for me to bid adieu to Hot Docs 2019 (cue: sad trombone). I have one more day of filmgoing before I need to pack it in and start packing for my annual post-festival vacation, during w…
Okay, it might be time to discuss the new “live open-captioning” policy at screenings this year. In theory, it’s fantastic – a way to make the intros and post-film Q&A sessions at Hot Docs even mo…
We’ve hit the halfway mark of the fest and, perhaps owing to me getting older or just being pooped as a result of high-tailing it from screening to screening, I’m REALLY tired! And I’ve noticed the en…
When you attend Hot Docs year after year, you start to discover filmmakers whose work you seek out at subsequent festivals. Back in 2013, I saw – and loved – Jason DaSilva’s When I Walk, which was a d…
I continue to be dismayed by the number of festgoers who still, despite all the pre-film requests, feel compelled to repeatedly check their email, text, surf the internet or just otherwise be discourt…
Could it be that years of pleading that the balcony in Lightbox 1 be open by default during festival screenings has finally paid off? Because yesterday (and, apparently, on other days as well, based o…
Let me begin today by saying I thought I’d seen it all in terms of rude behavior by film-fest audience members over the years: texting or making/taking calls during screenings, cutting in line, sittin…
Ahhhhhhh, it always feels SO good to step back into the world of Hot Docs after a year apart. Perhaps owing to the fact that it was only the first full day of moviegoing, everyone I encountered – from…
Some of these films were very good, one was kind of stinky, and the others fall somewhere in between. Here are the last five of the reviews for the 2019 films I saw before the fest got underway. I'm p…
Though I wasn't able to catch as many pre-festival screenings as I would have liked (::: shakes fist at day job :::), I did manage to get to a few, and this year's crop included a number of standouts.…
