By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival ran from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto The Kabin Crew, a group of aspiring child rappers and musicians in Cork, Ireland, went viral in 2024 with the high energy music video for their upbeat song “The Spark.” The kids behind the viral sensation are… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: Gealtra
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto In his documentary The Oldest Person in the World, filmmaker Sam Green focuses on people who have lived for over a century. These are the world record holders for longest lifespan, with French woman Jeanne Calment holding… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: The Oldest Person in the World
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto Soraya, the young subject at the centre of A Fox Under a Pink Moon, is an Afghan teen girl living in Iran, who is trying to flee across the Turkish border so she can make her way… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: A Fox Under a Pink Moon
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto Janay Boulos is a Lebanese journalist living in London, working as an Arabic correspondent for the BBC. Abd Alkader Habak is a photographer in Syria, forced to flee from the city of Idlib to Aleppo, as the… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: Birds of War
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto Director Tommy Avallone’s flashy documentary Myspace is a look at the rise and fall of the original social media platform, taking us back to the internet culture of the early to mid-2000s. Avallone explores the history of… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: Myspace
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto Kenny Loggins is the latest musical artist to get a career retrospective in the form of a documentary. Directed by Dori Berinstein, Kenny Loggins: Conviction of the Heart is a portrait of the musician, who scored massive… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: Kenny Loggins: Conviction of the Heart
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto Quebec filmmaker Jean-François Caissy’s Kindergarten unfolds almost like a nature documentary, only we are following human children instead of animals. Caissy’s film is set in a daycare centre in Quebec, and his approach involves just putting a… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: Kindergarten
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto The latest film from Canadian documentary filmmaker Barry Avrich (The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue, Born Hungry), This Above All: The Theatrical Life of Antoni Cimolino serves as a polished biographical portrait of a man who… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: This Above All: The Theatrical Life of Antoni Cimolino
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto In the slice-of-life documentary On My Own Terms, director Tadeusz Chudy follows teenaged half-siblings Pawel and Julka, who are living together at an orphanage in Poland. Pawel is a promising young boxer, whose coach sees a lot… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: On My Own Terms
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto When Mahsa Amini was arrested by the morality police in Iran for violating the country’s mandatory hijab laws, and later died in custody, her death sparked the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement when activists would risk and in… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: A War on Women
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto The world is facing a loneliness epidemic, with people starved for connection but struggling to meet each other in real life. Dating apps are filling that void, but come with their own set of challenges; these apps… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: Love Apptually
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto In their documentary Gimme Truth, co-directors Simon Ennis and Brad Abrahams explore modern conspiracy theories, by introducing us to a variety of subjects who believe in them. Their views range from vaccine skeptics to 9/11 truthers. These… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: Gimme Truth
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto The documentary Nekai Walks opens with a beat-by-beat account of the night that Nekai Foster got shot in the head in Toronto’s Jane and Finch neighbourhood. It was summer, and he was walking home from playing basketball,… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: Nekai Walks
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
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