As U.S. tariffs and takeover threats prompt much Canadian mindfulness, Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival continues to scan the world for its non-fiction film offerings.
“We’re going to keep the conversation global,” said Heather Haynes, Hot Docs’ director of programming. “I think that’s important because so many things are happening around the world and we need many, many perspectives.”
Hot Docs 2025 will present 113 documentaries — 35 of them world premieres — from 47 countries, at the Hot Docs Cinema and TIFF Lightbox. This defiant display of internationalism will span 11 days (Thursday through May 4), with a total of 179 screenings and more than 150 filmmaker Q&As.
The festival is still in recovery mode after last year’s brush with mortality due to staff defections and a funding crunch, which is why the number of films is down considerably from 2018’s high of 247.
About a quarter of the docs this year are Canadian, including Noam Gonick’s opening night attraction, “Parade: Queer Acts of Love & Resistance,” which revisits landmark moments in Canada’s LGBTQ+ history, interlacing personal stories, protest scenes and major breakthroughs.
Here are my picks for 10 of the fest’s best:
2000 Meters to Andriivka
Oscar-winning filmmaker and war correspondent Mstyslav Chernov, known for his 2023 documentary “20 Days in Mariupol,” returns with this gut-wrenching followup, which took the world documentary director’s prize at Sundance 2025. Chernov and journalist Alex Babenko embed with a determined team of Ukrainian soldiers as they push toward a strategic village occupied by Russian forces.
The mission, recapturing land just two kilometres away, may be largely symbolic, especially as hopes for a clear Ukrainian victory fade. Yet, in the treacherous, mine-strewn woods, with lethal drones overhead and the threat of ambush at every turn, each hard-fought advance feels monumental. Chernov’s nightmarish doc is a visceral reminder of the extraordinary bravery and staggering cost of this brutal war, highlighting the human struggle behind every inch of reclaimed ground.
“2000 Meters to Andriivka” follows a team of Ukrainian soldiers battling Russian occupation.
Mstyslav ChernovAlways
Winner of the top prize at Denmark’s CPH:DOX festival, Deming Chen’s second documentary feature is a luminous, deeply moving portrait of growing up in rural China. It follows mother-abandoned child Youbin Gong from ages nine to 13 as he discovers — and ultimately leaves behind — the solace of poetry amid poverty and hardship while being raised by his single father and paternal grandparents.
Through striking black-and-white and colour cinematography, the film captures both the lyrical beauty and hard realities of Gong’s world: cooking over a smoky campfire, tending livestock and enduring loneliness and loss. The poetic words of Gong and his classmates, with themes that include desolation and keeping secrets, are set against state propaganda broadcasts, the agonies of farming — swine flu rages — and the wisdom of elders concerning life and fate. Described as “a letter to childhood,” the film is tender, honest and unforgettable, evoking a powerful sense of innocence lost.
Ai Weiwei’s Turandot
Riddle me this: Why would a man who is “not interested in opera at all” and who rarely listens to music want to direct a new stage production of the Puccini opera “Turandot”? The answer makes sense when it involves a talent of Ai Weiwei’s polymathic calibre: “I like to do what I’m not good at.”
The Chinese artist and activist, a thorn in the side of his country’s dictatorial rules, has a history with “Turandot,” the story of a princess in ancient China who sets riddles to potential suitors, with death the penalty for wrong answers. Ai Weiwei was an extra in a Franco Zeffirelli production of the opera several decades ago, so when the Rome Opera came calling, he was game. His production boldly confronts the opera’s legacy of exoticism and Orientalist stereotypes, using it as a springboard to address today’s global crises: war, refugee displacement, pandemic and the struggle for freedom.
Little did anyone suspect at the time that COVID-19 and the Ukraine War would interrupt the production and delay Maxim Derevianko’s film. But it’s all part of the challenge and joy of telling an evergreen story that speaks to the doubts and traumas of the modern world.
At the Rome Opera, the artist and activist Ai Weiwei preps for his staging of “Turandot.”
Yasuko KageyamaCoexistence, My Ass!
Noam Shuster-Eliassi once worked as a United Nations diplomat; now, she’s a comedian with a sharp, urgent solo show. As her career and life have evolved, so have her views on the Middle East. “Coexistence, My Ass!” stands apart from typical standup thanks to Shuster-Eliassi’s drive to both provoke laughter and ask tough questions.
In this documentary, Canadian filmmaker Amber Fares takes Shuster-Eliassi’s act beyond the stage, following her across multiple locations over five years. As the discourse around Israel and Palestine has grown even more volatile after Oct. 7 and the devastating Israel-Hamas war, both Shuster-Eliassi and Fares have grown bolder. Their film is a testament to two courageous thinkers confronting hard truths and challenging audiences to reconsider what coexistence really means.
Comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi appears in the documentary “Coexistence, My Ass!”
Courtesy of Sundance InstituteCome See Me in the Good Light
A rickety roadside mailbox that remains standing despite repeated knockovers makes an apt metaphor for the resiliency of spoken-word star Andrea Gibson, the poet laureate of Colorado. Diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2021, Gibson, along with their partner, fellow poet Megan Falley, struggle with physical and emotional stresses as they confront hard truths in this compassionate, intimate and beautifully lensed film by Ryan White, the festival favourite prize winner at Sundance 2025 and audience award winner at the 2025 Full Frame doc fest.
As they prepare for what might be Gibson’s final stage performance, the couple embody the grace of their poem that attests to “falling over and over for your hard life, your perfect life, your sweet and beautiful life.”
Ghosts of the Sea
The world knew Peter Tangvald as an inspirational sailor and shipbuilder who plied the waves with vessels lacking motors, radios or telephones. Yet he paid a tragic personal price, with two of his seven wives dying at sea and later also his son Thomas and Tangvald himself. The Norwegian adventurer “vowed to be free at any cost,” says his filmmaker daughter Virginia, but her investigation into his 1991 shipwreck death and the 2014 loss at sea of her brother reveals dark truths.
“Ghosts of the Sea” is a haunting, artfully constructed documentary that unravels the myth of Tangvald’s romantic freedom, exposing a legacy of loss, suspicion and generational trauma. Virginia’s quest for answers — through archival footage, interviews and poetic imagery — challenges idyllic images of her father, confronting the possibility of a family curse while ultimately seeking hope that the cycle of tragedy might finally be broken.
Mr. Nobody Against Putin
Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, a Russian primary schoolteacher with a dog, parrot and wicked sense of humour, becomes an unlikely Michael Moore figure in this quixotic doc he directed with David Borenstein (“Dream Empire”). They capture Talankin’s sardonic take on his toxic copper-smelting town of Karabash and his quiet rebellion against Kremlin propaganda after Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. As militarization seeps into his school, Pasha’s playful narration contrasts with the grim reality of indoctrination and loss.
His principled resistance by filming, joking and refusing to teach lies makes for a riveting, courageous portrait of dissent in a place where truth can land you in jail — or a cemetery.
The Track
“Outrace the past” is the tag line and mantra of this inspirational doc by Canada’s Ryan Sidhoo, in which three teens from war-ravaged Bosnia and Herzegovina attempt to reclaim their country’s Olympic lustre in the luge event. Athletes Mirza, Zlatan and Hamza and their middle-aged coach, Senad, a former Olympic luger, struggle to raise funds and obtain equipment while training on a crumbling, graffiti-covered luge track in Sarajevo, a poignant reminder of the city’s hosting of the 1984 Olympics before war broke out in the former Yugoslavia.
Sidhoo crafts an affecting coming-of-age story, balancing exhilarating luge footage with intimate glimpses of daily life. Straight-arrow storytelling and striking visuals highlight the boys’ resilience and the enduring bonds of mentorship and friendship, bringing to life a comment one of them makes: “We don’t have much, but what we do have is perseverance.”
Shamed
Righteous avenger or remorseless internet troll? Attitudes are challenged and accusations fly in Matt Gallagher’s riveting account of Windsor, Ont., vigilante Jason Nassr, who built a large internet following with his “Creeper Hunter TV” posts on YouTube. Posing as underage girls, Nassr lured men into meeting him and then filmed the “gotcha!” encounters for public naming and shaming. Several of his dozens of targets ultimately committed suicide.
Nassr, currently completing 18 months of house arrest following convictions for intimidation, extortion and the production and distribution of child porn (he’s launched an appeal), says his intentions were to “promote change” in a society that fails to protect young people. He says he hopes the targets of his investigations “learn from the pain.” Journalists, lawyers, cops and grieving family members disagree, lamenting the lack of due process and echoing the sentencing judge’s view that “Creeper Hunter TV” was “vigilantism run amok.”
A bird strolls on the beach while a SpaceX rocket looms in the background, in a scene from the documentary “Shifting Baselines.”
Courtesy of Hot DocsShifting Baselines
Few places on Earth could top tiny Boca Chica, Texas, a one-stop illustration of global fears and dreams. Surrounded by bird-filled wetlands on the Rio Grande across from Mexico, it’s the place Elon Musk chose for his SpaceX headquarters and launching pads.
As Musk sends his 50-foot (and 1950s influenced) starships into the skies, with the dream of eventually reaching Mars, folks back on Earth — fishermen, stargazers, doomsayers and dreamers — look up with alarm and wonder, pondering the damage to the planet caused by rocket fuel pollution (and occasional explosions), sonic booms and space junk.
Considering how badly humans have treated their home planet, one skywatcher asks, “Why do we think it would go any better on Mars?” Quebec director Julien Élie films with lustrous B&W and a concerned mind.
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