The renowned Canadian festival Hot Docs, the world’s leading documentary film festival, is coming to Australia for the first time in June 2016. The first edition of hotDocs at Palace Cinemas will bring 24 inspiring and thought-provoking films from 15 countries to Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne.
Thoughtfully curated by artistic director Richard Moore, the festival will bring the best documentary films from all over the world for their Australian premiere. With films that cover a wide range of topics, hotDocs at Palace Cinemas is a festival for the curious mind, screening critically acclaimed hard-to-catch films and festival hits as well as promoting Q&As with filmmakers and special events.
Highlights include Jim: The James Foley Story (pictured), about the journalist who was executed by ISIS in 2014, which won the audience award at Sundance this year; The Road, which looks at corruption in China; Mr Gaga, the audience award winner at Berlinale 2016 about the Batsheva Dance Company; and What Tomorrow Brings, which looks at a woman’s fight to educate young girls in Afghanistan.
hotDocs at Palace Cinemas aims to play a vital role in preserving the documentary genre in Australia as well as studying its impact on society and the filmmaking industry. Richard Moore also hopes that the festival will become a platform for local productions. For this first edition, two Australian documentaries – Charlie Hill Smith’s Motorkite Dreaming and Helen Kapalos’s A Life Of its Own – will have their world premiere.
The original Canadian festival has a special country focus on Australia this year, consolidating the cultural exchange between the two countries. “The first time I went to Hot Docs in Toronto I was bowled over, not just by the programming on offer but by the deep appreciation of documentary as an art form,” says Richard Moore, “sitting in the Bloor Theatre, in the midst of Toronto’s bustling student quarter, in a space dedicated to screening documentaries all year round I knew I had arrived at the gates of documentary heaven. Imagine that in this country.”
Tickets go on sale May 17. Check out the official site here.
