Well, I would say that I had a fulfilling Hot Docs experience for my second year of attending the festival. I ended up seeing a final total of 13 films during the week, which was very good when you consider the fact that I only saw a single film last year. This year was the debut of…
For my final film of Hot Docs, I saw this French documentary that filmed the recruitment process for an insurance company. Ten job seekers come in for the job, not even being told what it is, and they go through a recruitment process that I can best describe as both shocking and enthralling. To call…
We Are Legion tells the history of “hacktivism,” the recent movement in which activist acts are done by a group of individuals through the internet. The main focus of the film is group “Anonymous.” A very interesting aspect of this history is that Anonymous started out as essentially online pranksters with no political agenda. Eventually they would become…
Even though it was not the original intention of the documentary, The Queen Of Versailles is a very interesting case study about a spoiled rich family and their attempts to cope with the financial crisis. The main focus of the film is Jackie Siegel, the trophy wife of timeshare king David Siegel. Jackie has seven children (and one…
My Name is Faith is about a girl named Faith, who suffers from what is called Attachment Disorder. As a very young child, she suffered from the neglect of her birth mother and, as a result, she is unable to trust her new adoptive parents. The film follows Faith as she goes to a camp for…
Herman’s House is about two people – Herman Wallace and Jackie Sumell. Wallace was Black Panther member, who was falsely accused of murdering a prison guard and has been kept in solitary confinement at Angola prison for about 40 years. Jackie is an artist and activist, who collaborated with Wallace on an art project in which she…
I am not going to waste too much of my energy talking about this “film,” which has ended up being my least favourite of Hot Docs. So, James Franco was shooting a guest role on General Hospital and there was some behind the scenes footage shot. According to the introduction by the co-director, there wasn’t really…
I should probably begin by saying that even though I am going to be quite critical of this film, I am still going to acknowledge that the filmmakers are still quite young and seemed pretty happy that the film got into a film festival and was actually shown to people. Plus, they gave out free…
You may not know Craig “Radioman” Castaldo by his name, but I am almost certain that you have seen the guy. Radioman is known for appearing at the film sets around New York City, always with his bike and trusty radio. Often this results in him getting a brief cameo role in the production. In…
There are 189 films screening throughout the course of Hot Docs. With so many films screening during the week, it can be easy for some of these films to get lost in the shuffle and get overwhelmed by the docs with big buzz. I am happy to say that I have discovered one of the…
