Hot Docs’ far-reach­ing pro­gramme imag­ines a clean, free and just future

“Noth­ing is real social­ly until it is expressed,” a biog­ra­ph­er tells Sylvie, the women at the cen­ter of Nel­ly & Nadine, a doc­u­men­tary that had its North Amer­i­can pre­mière at the Hot Docs Fes­ti­val in Toron­to. Sylvie is attempt­ing to piece togeth­er her grandmother’s sto­ry. She had been brought up believ­ing that her grand­moth­er Nel­ly, a Holo­caust sur­vivor, lived pla­ton­i­cal­ly with her friend and fel­low sur­vivor Nadine after being lib­er­at­ed. Only after dis­cov­er­ing troves of footage and let­ters does Sylvie real­ize that there is more to her grandmother’s rela­tion­ship and iden­ti­ty – a truth that was equal­ly sup­pressed by soci­ety and Sylvie’s own fam­i­ly; a truth that can be freed if it is sim­ply spoken.

Nel­ly & Nadine is one doc­u­men­tary of the festival’s many that acknowl­edges what it means to exist in this world and the world of the past as part of the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty. Boy­lesque and Silent Love are two oth­er exam­ples. They both focus on Pol­ish sub­jects: the for­mer fol­lows an 82-year-old Pol­ish drag queen while the lat­ter sees a les­bian woman return to her home in Poland fol­low­ing the death of her moth­er. These doc­u­men­taries make for cru­cial view­ing as a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ leg­is­la­tion has swept the coun­try in the last four years, remind­ing us of how much pain and suf­fer­ing there is in hav­ing to hide your identity.

As Nel­ly & Nadine wasn’t the only film to focus on an LGBTQ+ cou­ple, it was also far from the only doc­u­men­tary to focus on the Holo­caust. How Saba Kept Singing and House­witz show­case how Holo­caust sur­vivors cope with their trau­ma, in both trag­ic and com­ic ways, and The Art of Silence tells Mar­cel Maurceau’s sto­ry, a Jew­ish mime who took part in the French Resis­tance dur­ing World War Two.

This year’s Hot Docs screened films where doc­u­men­tar­i­ans and their sub­jects alike expressed fear, frus­tra­tion, and hope for the future – mak­ing it a wor­thy selec­tion to rep­re­sent the festival’s return to the­aters after hav­ing gone vir­tu­al in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The fea­tured envi­ron­men­tal doc­u­men­taries are also ones that embody all of these sen­ti­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to the top­ic of nuclear ener­gy. Bur­ial argues against the use of nuclear ener­gy, tak­ing us on a tour of radioac­tive waste in a med­i­ta­tive, abstract fash­ion, while Atom­ic Hope – - Inside the Pro-Nuclear Move­ment envi­sions a future where nuclear ener­gy is the environment’s sus­tain­ing hope.

War and Peace, on the oth­er hand, isn’t so much con­cerned with nuclear energy’s impact on the envi­ron­ment as the dan­ger nuclear weapons pose in the hands of pow­er-hun­gry rulers. Indi­an doc­u­men­tar­i­an Anand Pat­ward­han tack­les the arms race between Pak­istan and India, plat­form­ing stu­dents, farm­ers, mil­i­tary per­son­nel, and even Hiroshi­ma sur­vivors, to paint a con­cern­ing pic­ture of the pos­si­ble future of con­flict, while pre­serv­ing hope that those who oppose nuclear war­fare will be able to get their mes­sage heard.

War and Peace is not a recent doc­u­men­tary – it cel­e­brates its twen­ti­eth anniver­sary this year – and was includ­ed in this fes­ti­val as Pat­ward­han was award­ed this year’s Out­stand­ing Achieve­ment Award. A Time to Rise, Father, Son, and Holy War, and Rea­son also played at the fes­ti­val as part of this dis­tinc­tion. Pat­ward­han, who has faced cen­sor­ship in his home coun­try, doesn’t host his work on any major stream­ing plat­form and so not only is Hot Docs bring­ing atten­tion to a film­mak­er who has been pro­duc­ing impor­tant sto­ries for fifty years, but they are mak­ing his work acces­si­ble, even if for only ten days.

Pat­ward­han was not the only doc­u­men­tar­i­an to have a col­lec­tion of his work fea­tured: Hot Docs also screened four of Cana­di­an direc­tor Ray­monde Provencher’s films, all of which focus on glob­al human rights issues. War Babies and Grace, Mil­ly, Lucy … Child Sol­diers show­case the dev­as­tat­ing effect con­flict has on chil­dren, while Crimes With­out Hon­our and Café Désirs focus on the expe­ri­ences of mar­gin­al­ized indi­vid­u­als – women and gay men, respec­tive­ly – in repres­sive communities.

And as the largest doc­u­men­tary fes­ti­val in North Amer­i­ca is held in Cana­da, the array of Cana­di­an doc­u­men­taries, along­side those of Provencher’s, spotlit impor­tant sto­ries with­in the host coun­try. Beau­ti­ful Scars, The Kids in the Hall: Com­e­dy Punks, and Okay! (The ASD Band) fea­ture Cana­di­an icons, from musi­cians to come­di­ans; Unikkaat Sivu­nit­tin­nit (Mes­sages from the Past) show­cas­es the pow­er of song to unite an Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty; and Unloved: Huronia’s For­got­ten Chil­dren and The Unsolved Mur­der of Bev­er­ly Lynn con­front the Cana­di­an insti­tu­tions that failed their most vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions, as care cen­ters for those with dis­abil­i­ties and bringers of jus­tice for vic­tims of vio­lent crimes.

Six­ty-three coun­tries were rep­re­sent­ed in this year’s Hot Docs. These films tell sto­ries belong­ing to those attempt­ing to recon­nect with the past and those attempt­ing to build safer, clean­er, freer futures, through song, activism, and protest.