Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival has announced its 2021 lineup. Featuring 219 films from 66 countries, the program was culled from 2,300 submissions. Fifty percent of the directors in the festival program are women. The fest also achieved gender parity last year.
This year’s Big Ideas lineup, a series of in-depth conversations with film subjects and directors, includes Valerie Taylor, the Australian underwater photographer and conservationist at the center of Sally Aitken’s “Playing with Sharks,” and singer-songwriter Jully Black, author and professor Cheryl Thompson, and “Subjects of Desire” director Jennifer Holness will be exploring race and power in the context of evolving beauty standards.
Nanfu Wang’s “In the Same Breath” and Andrea Nevins’ “Hysterical” are among the titles in the Special Presentations slate. The former investigates COVID-19’s origin and spread, and the latter is a tribute to women comedians.
The Canadian Spectrum lineup includes Shannon Walsh’s “The Gig Is Up,” an exploration of the gig economy, and Tanya Talaga and Michelle Derosier’s “Spirit to Soar,” a look inside the Thunder Bay community following an inquest into the deaths of seven First Nations high school students.
Margaret Byrne’s “Any Given Day,” a portrait of three defendants in a specialized mental health prison probation program, and Mia Halme’s “People We Come Across,” the story of 700 Finnish tourists who travelled to Benin to assist in a tropical disease vaccine study, are among the offerings in the International Spectrum program.
“Documentaries are vitally important to helping us understand the world we live in, and to build bridges of understanding across cultural, social, and political divides, particularly at this unprecedented moment in time,” said Shane Smith, director of programming for Hot Docs. “This year’s Hot Docs program features the best in outspoken, outstanding documentary storytelling from 66 countries, all of which will connect us to each other in ways that inspire, inform, and illuminate.”
Hot Docs is being presented online from April 29-May 9. Check out the fest’s website for the complete lineup.
