By John Corrado A man gets off the subway and tries to exit the station. But every time he turns a corner, he ends up back in the same place, stuck in a seemingly endless loop. This is the premise behind the Japanese film Exit 8, a fun and suspenseful little puzzle box thriller from… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Exit 8 (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado Director Oliver Laxe’s Sirât opens on a memorably cinematic scene as a group of outcasts hold a rave in the middle of the Moroccan desert. We see evocative images of massive speakers being set up in the desert, as bodies bop and gyrate in time to the blaring techno music, the beat… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Sirât (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Sentimental Value is Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s followup to his 2021 modern classic The Worst Person in the World, reuniting him with that film’s star Renate Reinsve. If Worst Person was about a quarter-life crisis and searching for meaning in your twenties, Sentimental Value aims for something even more ambitious in scope.… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Sentimental Value (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado The 35th edition of the Inside Out Toronto 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival launches today, with both in-person screenings at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, and Ontario-wide virtual screenings as well. Tonight’s Opening Night Gala is the Canadian premiere of writer-director Elena Oxman’s drama Outerlands (May 23rd, 7:00pm), starring Asia Kate Dillon. The festival’s Closing… Read More The 2025 Inside Out Toronto 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival Runs from May 23rd to June 1st
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 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)
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