By John Corrado In her new documentary The Tale of Silyan, the follow-up to her Oscar-nominated Honeyland, director Tamara Kotevska once again explores the balance between people and nature in North Macedonia. In Honeyland, Kotevska focused on an elderly beekeeper having her traditional way of life – and her livelihood – threatened by a new family… Read More Movie Review: The Tale of Silyan
By John Corrado Director Raoul Peck’s new documentary Orwell: 2+2=5 is less biography of George Orwell, and more heavily slanted video essay that struggles to thread the needle between the British author’s work and selected modern events. It’s a major disappointment. The film’s title, of course, is a reference to Orwell’s most famous book 1984,… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Orwell: 2+2=5 (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado In his documentary You Had to Be There – full subtitle How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution, Spread Love & Overalls, and Created a Community That Changed the World (In a Canadian Kind of Way) – filmmaker Nick Davis explores a legendary 1972 Toronto production of the Stephen Schwartz musical… Read More #TIFF50 Review: You Had to Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution… (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado On the morning of October 7th, 2023, Hamas terrorists broke through the border between Israel and Gaza, and began indiscriminately murdering innocent civilians, including women and children, many of them executed in their homes. It was the worst mass murder of Jewish people since the Holocaust, and nearly two years later, there… Read More #TIFF50 Review: The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado A companion piece to the cinematic spectacle of his excellent 2022 biopic Elvis, Australian director Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert answers the question of what a Luhrmann-directed documentary looks like. We get the flurry of flashy images, editing, and title cards, with Luhrmann delivering all the visual razzle-dazzle we expect.… Read More #TIFF50 Review: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado A clear labour of love for director Colin Hanks and producer Ryan Reynolds, the celebrity bio-doc John Candy: I Like Me provides an engaging and moving tribute to the Canadian legend, both his work and his humanity. It was a fitting choice for the festival’s opening night on Thursday. The film’s name,… Read More #TIFF50 Review: John Candy: I Like Me (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado The animated documentary Endless Cookie, which won the Rogers Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary at Hot Docs, offers a quirky portrait of half-brothers Seth and Pete Scriver. Seth is a white animator living in Toronto, using a government grant to make a film about his Indigenous half-brother Pete, who lives in… Read More Movie Review: Endless Cookie
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival ran from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto If you didn’t know that Excel spreadsheets were a thing you could be the best at, well, have I got news for you. There’s a whole competition for it, where students come from around the world to… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: Spreadsheet Champions
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 Disneynature’s Earth Day releases have been an annual tradition since 2009, when the studio released Earth. The films have since shifted away from being theatrical releases and migrated to being released direct to streaming on Disney Plus, but the tradition remains largely the same. In Sea Lions of the Galapagos, the latest… Read More Movie Review: Sea Lions of the Galapagos (Disney+)
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