The Canadian documentary “Betrayal”, directed by Lena Macdonald, chronicles the whistleblowing of Cindor Reeves crucial to the war crimes conviction of Liberian President Charles Taylor by the United Nations backed special court for Sierra Leone in 2012. Taylor was convicted of sexual violence, physical violence, abductions, terrorizing civilian populations, forced labour and utilization of childContinue reading “Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: “Betrayal”: Not One but Many”
Category Archives: Toronto Hot Docs
Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: “Unwelcomed” (Si Vas para Chile)
“Unwelcomed” is yet another migrant crisis examined. During the COVID pandemic some 8 million Venezuelans migrants poured out of their economically and politically failing country. Some 300,000 Venezuelan undocumented migrants are presently in Chile. The journey is perilous fraught with gang robbery, murder and rape but the promised land lures the migrants. But what awaitsContinue reading “Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: “Unwelcomed” (Si Vas para Chile)”
Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: “Life Invisible”: Combatting Superbugs and a Lithium Obsession
Chilean microbiologist Professor Cristina Dorador rings the alarm bell many others have been ringing for decades. The wholesale and indiscriminate use of antibiotics has given those bad microbes it once easily defeated an opportunity to mutate and resist antibiotics killing an estimated five million people a year. We follow Dorador on an expedition to theContinue reading “Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: “Life Invisible”: Combatting Superbugs and a Lithium Obsession”
Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: Citizen Minutes: “La Femme Equi-Libre”: Horsing Around with Mental Health
The short documentary “La Femme Equi-Libre” focuses on the Elm Grove Centre in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island run by Josée Gallant Gordon a graduate social worker. Gordon offers equine therapy to mental health patients and in lieu of tranquilizing patients with enough tranquilizers to kill a horse the horse and therapist playContinue reading “Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: Citizen Minutes: “La Femme Equi-Libre”: Horsing Around with Mental Health”
Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: Citizen Minutes: “Becoming Ruby”: In the Footsteps of the Pansy Craze?
Alex Nguyen, a Vietnamese Winnipegger, struggled with his queerness at an early age. His progression into drag queen Ruby Chopstix was fraught with self doubt. Alex became the first resident drag artist of Winnipeg’s The Rainbow Resource Centre’s “Drag Artist in Residence” supporting drag artists to uplift “a beautiful form of queerness and culture” throughContinue reading “Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: Citizen Minutes: “Becoming Ruby”: In the Footsteps of the Pansy Craze?”
Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: Citizen Minutes: “Crossing the Great Divide” in the United States: Braver Angels
Watching American news in the past few years and speaking with Americans, most recently in California, one senses a polarized nation where a 6Jan21 riot was illustrative of a greater shade of polarization namely extremism. Rioters seen by some as “patriots” and by others as criminal insurrectionists. As to politics and related points of viewContinue reading “Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: Citizen Minutes: “Crossing the Great Divide” in the United States: Braver Angels”
Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: Citizen Minutes: “Red Girl Rising”
Joyce Jonathan Crone a Haudenosaunee, Mohawk, Turtle Clan from the Huntsville area in Ontario is, amongst many things, an activist, columnist, radio show host, writer and member of the Indigenous Advisory Council of the Ontario Provincial Police. She is founder of the Hope Arises Project which is committed to promoting a connection to Indigenous cultureContinue reading “Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: Citizen Minutes: “Red Girl Rising””
Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: “MAMA”: An Artistic and Creative Approach Chronicling the Nastiness of a Breast Cancer Experience
Ecuadorian Ana Cristina Benitez has crafted a creative if not poetic and hypnotic documentary about her battle with breast cancer. A late diagnosis of stage three breast cancer sets in motion an exhausting and debilitating round of chemotherapy and radiotherapy followed by a mastectomy. We are a fly on the wall spectators watching her receiveContinue reading “Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: “MAMA”: An Artistic and Creative Approach Chronicling the Nastiness of a Breast Cancer Experience”
Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: “The Track”: The Impossible Possibility
Sarajevo, the Bosnian-Herzegovina host city of the 1984 Winter Olympics, was under attack during the 1992-95 war. Street fighting, shelling and snipers made the city a dangerous place. While “peace” was attained Catholic, Bosnian and Serbian killings continue at a far lesser scale and the haunting memories of the war left no true peace. TheContinue reading “Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: “The Track”: The Impossible Possibility”
Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: “Walls – Akinni Inuk”
Having watched documentaries “Twice Colonized” (2023) and “Angry Inuk” (2016) I was expecting the Greenlandic Danish documentary “Walls – Akinni Inuk” to be infused with anger about the mistreatment of Greenlandic Inuk within the Greenlandic prison system. I saw no anger but frustration with the judicial system incarcerating Ruth in Greenlandic custodial detention for 12Continue reading “Toronto 2025 Hot Docs: “Walls – Akinni Inuk””
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