By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival ran from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto In their aptly titled documentary They’re Here, co-directors Daniel Claridge and Pacho Velez introduce us to a group of UFO enthusiasts from upstate New York. They all claim to have their own experiences with sightings or encounters,… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: They’re Here
By John Corrado The 2025 edition of Hot Docs has just come to a close, and the winners of the festival’s Audience Awards have just been announced. Coming in first for the Hot Docs Audience Award is Ryan White’s incredibly moving Come See Me in the Good Light, which was also my personal favourite of… Read More #HotDocs25 Audience Award Winners
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto When standup comedian Tig Notaro, one of the producers of Come See Me in the Good Light, faced her own cancer diagnosis, she announced it to the world by opening a show with the line “good evening,… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: Come See Me in the Good Light
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto In their documentary Deaf President Now!, co-directors Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim take us back to the student protests to elect the first Deaf president of Gallaudet University, offering a fantastic, cinematically rendered time capsule of this… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: Deaf President Now!
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto The provocative title of My Boyfriend the Fascist refers to the relationship between self-identified left-wing Italian filmmaker Matthias Lintner and his Cuban boyfriend Sadiel Gonzalez, a right-wing activist fighting communist influences. Lintner’s film takes a verite approach,… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: My Boyfriend the Fascist
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto In her documentary Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, director Shoshannah Stern crafts an engaging, intimate portrait of actress Marlee Matlin, who become the first Deaf actor to win an Oscar for her lead performance in the 1986… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto The title of #skoden refers to an Indigenous phrase that is the shorthand of “let’s go, then” said with an Indigenous accent. The saying became immortalized as a meme through a viral image of a Blackfoot man… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: #skoden
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto In their documentary Marriage Cops, co-directors Shashwati Talukdar and Cheryl Hess take us inside a police station in northern India, where a team of female officers provide marriage counselling to couples experiencing marital problems. It’s a way… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: Marriage Cops
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto Shot on luminous 16mm film, Agatha’s Almanac is a portrait of Agatha Bock, a subject who, in her mid-eighties, is proudly carrying on the traditions of rural farm living in southern Manitoba. The film is directed by… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: Agatha’s Almanac
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto Ai Weiwei’s Turandot looks at the Chinese artist and activist’s modern re-staging of Puccini’s opera at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome. The film opens with the quote “everything is art, everything is politics,” before dramatic footage from… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: Ai Weiwei’s Turandot
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto Director Noam Gonick’s documentary Parade: Queer Acts of Love & Resistance, which opens this year’s Hot Docs Film Festival, looks at the history of gay rights in Canada, and the origins of our country’s first Pride Parades as… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: Parade: Queer Acts of Love & Resistance
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. In her new film Sunshine, Filipina writer-director Antoinette Jadaone crafts a gritty and grounded teenage drama, that offers an interesting glimpse at life in the Philippines from a perspective that I hadn’t really seen… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Sunshine (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. Written and directed by visual effects artist Seth Worley in his feature directorial debut, Sketch is a nice surprise. It’s a decent and charming live action family film about a girl whose angry drawings… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Sketch (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. In The Penguin Lessons, director Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty, Military Wives) crafts a charming, based-on-a-true-story crowdpleaser that balances the sweet friendship between Steve Coogan and a penguin with Argentinian political drama. It’s a… Read More #TIFF24 Review: The Penguin Lessons (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. The latest film from Paul Schrader, Oh, Canada focuses on the legacy of a documentary filmmaker who dodged the draft, and how his choice to flee to Canada to avoid serving in the Vietnam… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Oh, Canada (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. In his second animated feature Flow, following his 2019 debut Away, Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis captures the wordless saga of a group of animals trying to survive a flood on their island. The creatures… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Flow (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. The latest film from Indonesian action filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto (Headshot, The Night Comes for Us), The Shadow Strays is a totally insane and highly stylized action flick. Right from the opening sequence laying waste… Read More #TIFF24 Review: The Shadow Strays (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. Director Nick Toti’s It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This is a found footage horror movie that definitely works best as a midnight experience shared with an audience. The filmmaker has stated that… Read More #TIFF24 Review: It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. Former music video director Joseph Kahn follows up his raucous 2017 battle rap satire Bodied with Ick; a sci-fi horror comedy that serves as homage to stereotypical early-2000s high school movies, starring Brandon… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Ick (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Bird is another gritty, slice-of-life drama from British filmmaker Andrea Arnold, that also feels like a bit of a diversion. It is recognizably of a piece with her previous… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Bird (Special Presentations)
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