Hot Docs Festival takes place every year since 1993 in Toronto. It’s one of the most popular documentary festival in the world ! Due to the pandemic, this year festival is online.
More than 140 films are available in streaming, on Hot Docs website, only in Ontario, from May 28 to June 6th – and most of them will be available until June 24.
The Cultural Service is glad to co-present three French productions : two features Green Blood and If it were love, followed by pre-recorded Q&As, and a short, Lhomme’s Dreams.
Ontario audience can stream a film for 9$ (8 for Members), or enjoy 5 films for 40$ (36 for Members). For further info, rendez-vous on Hot Docs Festival website
Green Blood
208 min - 2019 - France - North American Premiere Directors : Jules Giraudat, Arthur Bouvart, Alexis Marant
In an era of eroded journalism, fragmented audiences and consolidated corporate power, it takes 40 journalists from 15 countries, working together to protect themselves, to tackle a series of stories bigger than nations. An unprecedented collaborative investigation that uncovers the dangerous practices of three mining companies operating in India, Guatemala and Tanzania, Green Blood exposes crimes against humanity and the environment. Taking a behind-the-scenes approach, international journalists support the work of local reporters who have been threatened, jailed or killed as the result of their pursuit of the truth. In India, a murdered journalist’s coverage of the sand mining mafia is continued by a colleague. In Guatemala, a Q’eqchi’ journalist confronts the police and politicians protecting a nickel mine that pollutes and poisons the Indigenous population with impunity. In Tanzania, journalists struggle to report on the impact of a remote gold mine (whose majority shareholder is Canadian behemoth Barrick), which deters the community’s artisanal miners with rape and murder. Angie Driscoll
This film includes a pre-recorded Q&A
If It Were Love
Fifteen young dancers are touring Crowd, a piece on the ’90s rave scene by French-Austrian choreographer Gisèle Vienne. Following them from theatre to theatre, Patric Chiha’s observation of their work turns into a trance-like reverie. With hypnotic sound and camera work, the director traces the flow of desire between bodies, the multitude of fictions written by beats and gestures. Capturing the transcendental dimension of the club, he seizes the moment when the dancers enter a mystical state outside of time. He then progressively departs from the group to focus on the performers’ individual stories, filming confidential conversations backstage where the line between real life and performance becomes blurry. Is the stage contaminating reality, or the other way around? Winner of a Teddy Award at this year’s Berlinale, If It Were Love is an ecstatic exploration of love and violence, party and pain, raw emotions and queer sensuality. Charlotte Selb
Lhomme’s Dreams
Without ever having travelled, Dr. Jules Lhomme amassed over 3,000 artifacts, becoming one of the world’s first collectors of African art. What was once considered a cabinet of curiosities now resembles a coffin of colonial atrocities, in this haunting animated archive of imaginary exploration and realized exploitation. Angie Driscoll