Peter Howell: 10 Hot Docs hot picks from the tragedies in Ukraine and Lac-Mégantic to 21st-century witchcraft and Einstein’s brain

Toronto’s Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival has grown over the past three decades from an ambitious selection of 21 factual films into a sprawling cinematic canvas of what’s on the world’s fevered brain.

The 30th edition of this Toronto tradition, running April 27 to May 7 at various downtown venues, will be a mostly in-person affair, with 214 features and shorts drawn from 72 countries. (More than 100 films will stream nationwide from May 5 to 9 on hotdocs.ca.)

With topics ranging from war to witches, and featuring such blazing personalities as singer/activist Joan Baez and former Supreme Court of Canada justice Rosalie Abella, the fest offers its usual array of must-see documentaries.

Here are my alphabetically arranged 10 hot picks at Hot Docs 2023:

20 Days in Mariupol

A grim heartbreaker and essential viewing. Ukrainian journalist Mstyslav Chernov’s on-the-run doc, a Sundance 2023 audience winner, is painful to watch as it unsparingly shows civilian carnage during the bloody opening days of the Russian war on its neighbouring country. Chernov and his colleagues Evgeniy Maloletka and Vasilisa Stepanenko cut through the noise of battle (and Russian disinformation campaigns) to show what’s really happening on the Ukrainian battlefront. The bravery of Ukrainians becomes all the more apparent, but stories and photos seen in many early media dispatches, including the much-publicized image of a pregnant woman being carried to hospital, don’t always have a happy outcome. Yet watch we must; truth will out.

Coven

Forget all that “double double toil and trouble” nonsense. Rama Rau’s spellbinding doc reveals that a lot more than incantations goes into being a witch in today’s complex world, as seen in the identity quests of three millennial women. Laura, Ayo and Andra are on similar but separate paths as they traverse the globe seeking guidance, context and history regarding Wicca and/or other brands of witchery. Main quester Laura, who equates witchcraft with her evolving view of feminism, discovers she’s related to someone who “created a ghost” and also to two victims of historical wrongs, including the Salem Witch Trials. The doc takes a matter-of-fact approach to an oft-derided subject, one that could have an alternative title, courtesy of a high priestess: “So you want to be a witch.”

Joan Baez I Am a Noise

The cacophonous title seems at odds with the public image of folk songbird Baez, a social justice legend who throughout her six-decade career has drawn adoring comparisons to the likes of the Virgin Mary and Mahatma Gandhi. But Baez, 82, recently retired from touring, explains in this achingly honest doc by Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky and Maeve O’Boyle why saintly labels don’t apply to her: “There’s a powerful lot of anger lurking just under my big smile.” Interviews and archival performances are supplemented by Baez’s many personal letters, which are animated for the screen. Among the many revelations are lifelong anxiety issues, paternal abuse allegations and the bittersweet truth that her famous love affair with Bob Dylan really did break her heart.

Lac-Mégantic — This Is Not an Accident

No horror movie could match what happened in Quebec’s placid Lac-Mégantic in the early morning of July 6, 2013. A runaway train, on fire and loaded with the most flammable of oils, derailed in the town’s central core, vaporizing 47 lives and leaving more than 2,000 other people displaced. Reasons for the tragedy were many, but what emerges from this superlative four-part investigation by Oscar-nominated director Philippe Falardeau (“Monsieur Lazhar”) is an indictment of corporate and government officials who preach safety and regulatory oversight yet who seem to accept occasional railway disasters as the cost of doing business. Scariest of all is the evidence little has changed in the past 10 years: “What we’ve got on the tracks today are bombs,” someone aptly declares.

The Longest Goodbye

For those of us who aren’t rocket scientists, it’s easy to assume the biggest hurdle to sending people to Mars is vehicle propulsion. Ido Mizrahy’s riveting doc, a Canada/Israel co-production, suggests isolation looms larger: How will humans handle being locked inside a van-sized spacecraft for three years, cut off from family and friends? We meet Al Holland, a NASA psychologist tasked with solving loneliness. He employs coping techniques used in the 2010 rescue of 33 Chilean miners, who were trapped underground for 69 days. Future Mars travellers, as soon as a decade from now, might be put into hibernation before space travel and/or have AI companions to fly with. The questions are all the more urgent, given next year’s Artemis II moon mission, a prelude to Mars travel.

The Man Who Stole Einstein’s Brain

The title bird of “The Maltese Falcon” has nothing on Einstein’s brain as a plot-driving movie MacGuffin, especially since this detective story happens to be true. Filmmaker Michelle Shephard, a former Toronto Star journalist, follows a long and twisting road (including a Canadian stop), seeking answers about the fate of the confiscated cerebrum of Albert Einstein, the renowned 20th-century physicist. The thriller-like doc tracks the movements and utterances of Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who controversially extracted Einstein’s puzzler during a 1955 autopsy. Harvey’s alleged good intentions of preservation turn into a morass of bad decisions, dubious science and late-show wisecracks. And as for what ultimately happened to the great thinker’s brain, well, you just have to watch.

Someone Lives Here

A lot of people have opinions about those living on the streets and in public parks. Toronto carpenter Khaleel Seivwright has wood, a saw, a hammer and, most importantly, a heart. He’s determined to actually do something about the chronic problem of homelessness. His easily installed tiny shelters, based on his own past experience living outdoors, could be one answer to homelessness and he gets raves from inhabitants of his mini-homes, including a woman who says it helped her overcome her potentially life-threatening depression. But Seivwright encounters a wall of indifference and heartlessness from city bureaucrats and then-Mayor John Tory. Director Zack Russell gives us the lowdown on when good intentions meet sticky red tape.

Total Trust

There are many justifiable fears these days about digital surveillance and artificial intelligence, but they could be 20 years too late. That’s the sobering thought raised by this inquiry by “One Child Nation” co-director Jialing Zhang into China’s massive state intrusion into personal privacy. For the past two decades, China has been monitoring citizens for their “trustworthiness,” using an increasingly Orwellian series of laws and a rapidly growing arsenal of high-tech surveillance tools to keep everyone from human rights activists to jaywalkers in line and perpetually fearful. Without a trace of irony, we learn of the “Skynet Project,” a digital snooping program sharing a name with a “Terminator” film AI menace, which already has 170 million cameras watching Chinese citizens and another 400 million soon to be installed. Terrifying.

Twice Colonized

The energizing presence of Aaju Peter, a seal hunt advocate and lawyer, is already known to viewers of “Angry Inuk,” Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s 2016 doc. Peter is no less a dynamo in Lin Alluna’s provocative new film, titled for Peter’s autobiography and her years of fighting colonialism first in Denmark and then in Canada. The doc is almost a sequel to “Angry Inuk” in the way it tracks her continuing activism for Indigenous rights, which includes defending the traditional seal hunt and lobbying for a permanent forum for Indigenous people within the European Union. Peter’s personal well-being also figures prominently in the narrative. Grieving for a lost son while attempting to disentangle herself from an abusive ex-boyfriend, she’s attempting to answer a self-posed question: “Is it possible to change the world and mend your own wounds at the same time?”

Without Precedent: The Supreme Life of Rosalie Abella

The word “charming” is rarely used to describe a judge, much less a supreme one. But it aptly describes recently retired Supreme Court of Canada justice Rosalie Abella, as seen in this affectionate tribute from Barry Avrich. Many superlatives describe Abella — youngest Canadian judge ever at age 29, first Jewish female Supreme Court of Canada justice — and landmark legal rulings on employment equity, constitutional law and same-sex marriage attest to her dedication and wisdom as a jurist who wasn’t afraid of controversy. Raves about her come from law clerks right on up to three former prime ministers. But as Abella talks in her amusingly tchotchke-filled office and home, she seems proudest of being a devoted wife to late author Irving Abella and mom to two sons. A life well lived, one that improved the lives of many Canadians.

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