The Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema at 506 Bloor St. West in Toronto on April 22, 2024.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Truth being stranger than fiction, Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival returns next week after enduring the most challenging financial and structural period in its 32-year history.
At about this time last year, producing a 2025 edition of North America’s largest documentary festival was far from a given. Just a few days before Hot Docs announced its 2024 lineup last March, the non-profit organization seemed to be on the verge of collapse, having lost its newly appointed artistic director and then a number of veteran programmers. But that staff exodus was only the beginning of its troubles, which would come to include public pleas for government funds, the departure of president Marie Nelson (just a little more than a year after taking on the job), the temporary shuttering of its flagship downtown Toronto cinema and the restructuring of its board of directors.
“When I walked into this role, I wasn’t sure whether the turbulence of the past year meant that there would still be people here to support us, and boy oh boy was I surprised how many people really jumped forward to ask how they could help,” Janice Dawe, who was appointed Hot Docs’ interim executive director after Nelson’s departure, told The Globe last fall. “That sustained us through the summer. And we don’t have a choice here – we are going to march forward and deliver on our mission.”
Today, that mission includes the launch of this year’s slimmed down but still fulsome festival, which runs from April 24 through May 4 and features 113 feature-length docs (down from the 168 screened in 2024 and the 214 screened in 2023). The event will also open under a renewed sense of purpose and vision, with Toronto International Film Festival veteran Diana Sanchez recently hired as executive director.
Still, Hot Docs faces a rocky road.
For starters, this will be the last year for the festival’s long-time leading sponsor Scotiabank, which became the target of protests in 2024 over the bank’s investment in the Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems.
Meanwhile, Hot Docs is still seeking a buyer for the prime piece of real estate housing its year-round cinema at 506 Bloor Street West, which the organization purchased in 2016 with the help of a $4-million donation from the Rogers Foundation. The hope is to secure a favourable leaseback arrangement from any potential buyer, with sources saying that such a deal appears to be close.
Finally, Hot Docs continues to stare down financial challenges, with the organization’s T3010 Registered Charity Information Return for the reporting period ending May 2024 showing a deficit of $2.6-million.
In a statement released to The Globe and Mail, organizers said that Hot Docs is operating on an approved budget for the fiscal year of 2025 with a 14-per-cent reduction in spending (totalling roughly $1.6-million), with savings attributed to organizational restructuring, pausing and restructuring the cinema’s programming, reducing overhead (including moving to a fully hybrid working model after exiting newly leased office space in Toronto’s east end) and scaling back this year’s festival.
Sanchez, who stepped into her role March 31, was not available for an interview ahead. But in a statement announcing her arrival, the executive director said that Hot Docs was entering “an exciting new chapter – one of growth, transformation and renewed vision. As documentary cinema continues to evolve, I’m eager to champion bold voices, embrace fresh ideas and foster meaningful connections – both within our local community and across the global documentary landscape.”
To that end, here are five of the best bets from this year’s Hot Docs lineup, gleaned from advance viewing, industry buzz, filmmaker pedigree and intriguing subject matter.
Parade: Queer Acts of Love & Resistance
The world premiere of Canadian director Noam Gonick’s chronicle of the activists and moments that have built the foundation of Canada’s 2SLGBTQI+ movement will open this year’s festival. Combining rarely seen archival footage with poignant first-person remembrances, the National Film Board-funded Parade traces how the community overcame fear and hostility from such state institutions as the police and the House of Commons to lead a bold and hopeful new era of pride. (Screens April 24, April 26, May 3)
Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore
Leading Hot Docs’ “Big Ideas” series, director Shoshannah Stern’s biographical doc makes its Canadian premiere after a warm reception at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. The first deaf actor to win an Oscar (for her role in 1986’s Children of a Lesser God), Marlee Matlin takes us through her remarkable life and career in this candid and revealing doc, which finds a neat full-circle moment when the deaf-family drama CODA triumphs at the 2022 Academy Awards. Matlin, who has starred in everything from NBC’s The West Wing to Broadway’s Spring Awakening, will participate in a conversation alongside Stern after the film’s April 27 Hot Docs premiere. (Screens April 27, April 30, May 4)
Mr. Nobody Against Putin
In a small Russian town, class is in session. The only problem? The curriculum is composed almost entirely of state-sponsored, anti-Ukraine propaganda. The Canadian premiere of director David Borenstein’s film focuses on one brave teacher named Pasha who, assigned by his school to record sessions of indoctrination, becomes one of the Kremlin’s most unlikely whistleblowers. (Screens April 26, April 27)
Shamed
Matt Gallagher’s hot-button documentary is the second film of 2025 to examine the rise of vigilantes who target alleged pedophiles, after January’s Sundance premiere of David Osit’s Predators. While Osit’s film traces the toxic legacy of NBC’s To Catch a Predator, Gallagher’s film follows a “creeper hunter” named Jason Nassr who poses online as underage girls in order to ensnare potential abusers. But dissecting the legality of Nassr’s tactics is only the starting point for Shamed, which zeroes in on what happens when the internet’s version of justice collides with reality. (Screens April 28, May 2)
Yalla Parkour
Parkour, the street sport in which amateur daredevils bounce off walls and other everyday objects to get from one place to the other, is having something of a contemporary moment after first exploding in the early aughts. Last month saw the world premiere of Michael Bay’s jaw-dropping parkour doc We Are Storror at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Tex. Now, director Areeb Zuaiter’s Yalla Parkour is set to make its Canadian premiere at Hot Docs. But this new film has a political edge to it, following a young parkour athlete named Ahmed Matar who develops his breathtaking craft on the streets of Gaza. (Screening April 26, April 28)
