Women and Hollywood has already spotlighted some of our most anticipated women-driven and -directed features at Hot Docs in our preview, and now we’re turning our attention to the fest’s shorts program. As is the case for the feature side, some of the shorts selected for Hot Docs physical fest, which was cancelled due to COVID-19, will be available online in the fest’s digital edition. Hot Docs Festival Online kicks off May 28 and is geo-blocked to Ontario, Canada. More information about the program and how to tune in can be found here.
As director Erica Beebe described it, her short film “Radia” “is a poetic portrait of a Moroccan woman named Radia who grew up tending to her father’s sheep.” A reflection on “the idea of agency and how invention, determination, and achievement exist independently of anyone’s permission,” the project examines Radia’s evolving attitudes toward her work, and whether it is, indeed, her destiny.
“I hope that audiences will empathize with Radia, and that they’ll turn that empathy into advocacy for girls and women in their own communities. In the film, Radia speaks candidly about her sorrows and trials. We get a clear sense of the ways in which Radia has been silenced. However, Radia is also someone who wants to write her own narrative, which includes building a better life for the girls in her community,” Beebe told us. “I hope that people will hear her story and be moved to uplift the girls in their lives, and ask themselves, ‘How can I help these girls write their own stories?’”
Several other Hot Docs shorts also delve into their subjects’ professions and passions. Ana Serna and Paula Iglesias’s “They’re Just Fish” is the story of three women “aquaculture magicians” who run a fish farm in the Algerian desert. The protagonist of Noemie Nakai’s “Tears Teacher” believes crying is a vital part of people’s health. Sarah Jackson, the subject of Dia Sokol Savage’s “Welcome Strangers,” leads a group of volunteers who take in ICE detainees in Aurora, Colorado.
“Country Girl” “is a docudrama about Lillith, a young woman struggling to make ends meet; but whose devotion to her beloved horse leads her to make extraordinary sacrifices,” director Ellen Evans revealed. “When I met Lillith she was waiting for a court date to fight the termination of her state benefits, and the film follows her life in limbo whilst financial pressures mount and her ability to keep Meg [her horse] is put at risk.”
As Evans told us, she utilized staged sequences and observational footage in “Country Girl” in order to “empower Lillith not just as a ‘subject’ but as an active agent in the storylines of her life, and tell the ‘truth’ of her situation in a style that wasn’t necessarily grounded in straight-up vérité.”
Writer-director Caroline So Jung Lee also played with the traditional documentary form with “At the Bottom of the Sea,” an experimental short chronicling Seoul’s “Courage to be Uncomfortable” demonstration. Thousands attended the event, held in December 2018, protesting systemic misogyny, surveillance, and sexism. “At the Bottom of the Sea” also presents the lead up to the demonstration, and sees women around the country sharing their perspectives.
Head over to Hot Docs’ website to check out all of the 2020 shorts and to find viewing info for titles screening during the digital fest.
