An ACLU lawyer prepares to testify to the US Supreme Court against an anti-trans ruling in Heightened Scrutiny. In December 2024, Chase Strangio, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties …
Hot Docs
A new space race begins in a small Texan town in Shifting Baselines. At Spacebase, just outside of the Texan town of Boca Chica, located on the Mexican border, companies …
The aftermath of a police shooting is commented on through street art and spoken word in Night Watches Us. On August 17, 2018, Nicolas Gibbs, a 24-year-old black Montreal man, …
Seven climate scientists are invited to group therapy in Climate in Therapy. There are more than 20,000 climate scientists worldwide, and the approach to science often sees emotion as irrational. …
Queer artist Rashaad Newsome creates a decolonization installation in New York’s Park Avenue Armoury in Assembly. Rashaad Newsome is a proudly queer artist, who plans to use his next work …
Students from around the world participate in a gruelling Microsoft Excel competition in Spreadsheet Champions. Every year, the Microsoft Office Specialist World Championships bring together the brightest minds to determine …
Four individuals from upstate New York tell their stories encountering UFOs in They’re Here. Upstate New York is a hotspot of UFO sightings and a number of individuals are not …
The Secretary General of NATO faces a challenging final year in Facing War. Jens Stoltenberg has been the head of NATO and is read to stand down and return home …
The tragically short career of the “Queen of Tejano Music” is recollected in Selena y Los Dinos. Selena Quintanilla was the youngest daughter of Mexican-American musician Abraham Quintanilla. Beginning at …
A Russian schoolteacher secretly begins filming the propaganda added to the curriculum in Mr. Nobody Against Putin. Pavel “Pasha” Talankin is the event coordinator and media faculty at an elementary …
The All Native Basketball Tournament and its importance to the Haida people are looked at in Saints and Warriors. The All Native Basketball Tournament in Prince Rupert has for six …
The lead journalist for Bellingcat goes on the run after being targeted for assassination by Russia in Antidote. Christo Grozev is the lead journalist of the open-source news organization Bellingcat, …
Israeli comedian and activist Noam Shuster Eliassi uses the Israel-Palestine conflict as the basis for her one woman show in Coexistence, My Ass. Noam Shuster Eliassi is a Jewish woman …
The career of trailblazing deaf actor Marlee Matlin is revisited in Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore. In 1985, a 19-year-old Marlee Matlin was cast in Randa Haines’s film adaptation of …
Spoken-word poet Andrea Gibson reflects on their life after being diagnosed with incurable ovarian cancer in Come See Me in the Good Light. Andrea Gibson is the Poet Laureate of …
The final years of an elderly couple in China are documented in The Gardener and the Dictator. Filmmaker Hui Wang returns home to Wuhan, China to film her elderly grandparents, …
The subcultures surrounding the world’s most dedicated soccer fans are explored in Ultras. The dedicated fans who crowd into Football stadiums are considered to be the world’s most popular subculture. …
The son of a popular spiritual healer has to deal with his conflicted feelings when he is asked to attend a ceremony in Supernatural. André Malby was an infamous spiritual …
The tragic story behind a photo of an indigenous man that went viral is told in #skoden. Beginning around 2008, a photo of an indigenous man putting his dukes up …
Filmmaker Eleanor Mortimer joins a team of taxonomists from the Natural History Museum in London on a research mission studying deep-sea creatures and the effect that proposed mining operations may …
An online vigilante baits alleged sexual predators in Shamed. Jason Nassr built an online following through his YouTube series Creeper Hunter TV, where he would bait alleged sexual predators by …
A woman tries to find answers to why her brother experienced the same lost-at-sea fate as her father in Ghosts of the Sea. Virginia Tangvald is the youngest daughter of …
A boy growing up in rural China finds solace through poetry in Always. Gong Youbin was born in a poor Chinese family in the countryside of Hunan. Gong finds an …
A Toronto filmmaker makes an animated documentary about his family in Shamattawa, Manitoba, in Endless Cookie. Seth Scriver receives funding to make a documentary animation featuring stories narrated by Seth’s …
The Chinese artist and activist is asked to direct a new production of Puccini’s opera in Ai Weiwei‘s Turandot. In 2018, the Rome Opera asked Chinese artist and activist Ai …
Canada’s history of 2SLGBTQI+ activism is explored in Parade: Queer Acts of Love & Resistance. There was a time when it was illegal to be homosexual in Canada. The first …
The dark side of digital advertising is exposed in The Click Trap. Tech giants such as Google and Facebook have effectively turned themselves into advertising companies, by tracking users around …
French filmmaker Emmanuel Reyé investigates the worst accident in the history of motor racing, which took the lives of two of his uncles in Le Mans 55: The Unauthorized Investigation. …
A Mongolian woman splits her time being a mother and a member of a Nationalist gang in Daughter of Genghis. Gerel Byamba is a Mongolian woman, who leads an all-woman …
The lives of the youth of Baghdad following the 2019 protests are explored in Immortals. Today in Iraq, 60% of the country is under the age of 25. Milo is …
Current and former Amazon employees try to unionize at a Staton Island fulfillment centre in Union. Chris Smalls is a former employee of Amazon’s JFK-8 FullFilment Centre on Staton Island, …
An e-commerce blogger is targeted by an aggressive cyber-stalker in Whatever It Takes. For over 25 years Natick, Massachusetts resident Ina Steiner and her husband David operated the blog EcommerceBytes, …
The Japanese dance form of Butoh is explored in Invisible People. Butoh is a contemporary Japanese dance that flows between revolt, eroticism, trance, prayer, ancestral experience, and physical anonymity. Yoshito …
British actors try to stage a full production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the world of Grand Theft Auto Online in Grand Theft Hamlet. Unable to find acting roles during …
A Cree survivor of colonial trauma finds solace in his passion for the stars in Wilfred Buck. Wilfred Buck had a traumatic upbringing, with his siblings being victims of the …
Cree photographer and filmmaker Neil Diamond traces the Indigenous influence on Western culture and identity in Red Fever. Neil Diamond is a Cree photographer and filmmaker, but he doesn’t meet …
LGBTQ poet Staceyann Chin has spent decades trying to reconcile the abandonment by her mother in A Mother Apart. When Staceyann Chin was a 9-year-old in Jamaica, her mother Hazel …
The First Nations of North America band together to repatriate buffalo to their territories in Singing Back the Buffalo. In 2014, Blackfoot Elder Leroy Little Bear introduced a treaty with …
A young man with a GNAO1 Neurodevelopmental Disorder documents his own experiences living as someone with a disability in The Ride Ahead. Samuel Habib grew up with symptoms of cerebral …
A young man tries to reconcile his father’s death with the help of old home movie recordings in My Dad’s Tapes. On August 9, 2006, Leonard Watson dropped off his …
Four neurodiverse teens in Victoria, Australia prepare to participate in the school musical in This is Going to Be Big. At Macedon Ranges Specialist School in Victoria, Australia, music teacher …
Members of the Wet’suwet’en nation fight for the sovereignty of their unceded territory in Yinah. The Wet’suwet’en hold 22,000 km² of unceded territory on the west coast of Turtle Island. …