Filmmaker Daniel Gordon investigates the 1988 Olympic race that resulted in disgrace for Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, a gold medal for the USA’s Carl Lewis, and major controversy over drug testing.
In this chilling and inventive documentary, executive produced by Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, the unrepentant former members of Indonesian death squads are challenged to re-enact some of their many murders in the style of the American movies they love.
The lives of a liberal Egyptian revolutionary and a pro-Mubarak horseman collide in the aftermath of the Arab Spring in this urgent, enthralling drama shot on location in the immediate wake of the historic demonstrations in Tahrir Square.
David Geffen and director Susan Lacy join us onstage for a live conversation after the world premiere screening of this new film, which traces the mogul's impact on the worlds of music, film, philanthropy and beyond.
Telling harsh truths about the modern music business, Artifact gives intimate access to singer/actor Jared Leto and his band Thirty Seconds to Mars as they battle their label in a brutal lawsuit and record their album This Is War. The film is a true artifact of our times, as its subjects struggle with big questions over art, money and integrity.
Syrian director Hala Alaballa's film was initially intended to be a documentary foray into the tradition of caricature drawing in Egypt and Syria, but the insurgencies in both countries led to this electrifying, intimate and passionate study on the fearless tenacity of Arab artists fighting for freedom and justice.
Spike Lee pays tribute to Michael Jackson's Bad on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the epochal album, offering behind-the-scenes footage of Jackson recording the album and interviews with confidants, musicians, choreographers, and such music-world superstars as Kanye West, Sheryl Crow, Cee Lo Green and Mariah Carey.
Visionary filmmaker Denis Côté (Curling) offers a strikingly beautiful contemplation of the caged denizens of a zoo in this intriguing cinematic inquiry into the mysterious rapport and insuperable gulf between animals and humans.
A landmark in Canadian independent cinema, Larry Kent's jazzy, Nouvelle Vague–style chronicle of the sexual shenanigans of a young printer returns in a new restoration.
An enthralling documentary portrait of twenty-nine-year-old Shin Dong-huyk, who was born and spent the first two decades of his life behind the barb wire of a North Korean labour camp, until his dramatic escape launched him into an outside world he had never known.
This essential new documentary pays tribute to the legacy of the late, legendary casting director Marion Dougherty and shines a light on one of the most overlooked and least understood crafts in filmmaking. Packed with interviews with a "who's who" of top stars and filmmakers, this world premiere screening will be followed by a live, onstage discussion with people who were deeply affected by Dougherty, including some of the participants in the film.
The devastating new documentary by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon on the infamous "Central Park Jogger" case details how a rush to judgment by police, media and an outraged public led to five black and Latino teenagers being convicted for a heinous crime that they did not commit.
Visionary filmmaker Peter Mettler (Gambling, Gods and LSD) traverses the globe to explore (and explode) our conceptions of time, in this entrancing combination of documentary and mind-expanding philosophical speculation.
Taking inspiration from the collaborative 1967 militant anthology film Far from Vietnam, five of the boldest and most prominent American militant filmmakers unite to create this searing (and seething) omnibus work, employing a variety of approaches to reveal the hidden costs of the United States' (and Canada's) most expensive and longest-running war.
Far Out Isn't Far Enough follows the multiple careers of the artist Tomi Ungerer, who had stints as a bestselling children's book author, an illustrator of 1960s protest posters, and a creator of explicit erotica until he found himself shunned from the American publishing industry.
A seventy-year-old veteran of the Algerian War of Independence speaks about his years of struggle as an underground soldier for the National Liberation Front, in this fascinating documentary by first-time filmmaker Damien Ounouri.
With great wit and insight, New York City filmmaker Nina Davenport documents her quest to have a baby as a single mother over forty. Davenport's film taps into the zeitgeist topic of how the modern family is being re-imagined.
In this essential new feature documentary, legendary radical activist Angela Davis speaks for the first time about her 1970s imprisonment as a terrorist and conspirator, which became a flashpoint in the black liberation struggle and turned her into a revolutionary icon.
In an unprecedented and candid series of interviews, six former heads of the Shin Bet — Israel's intelligence and security agency — speak about their role in Israel's decades-long counterterrorism campaign, discussing their controversial methods and whether the ends ultimately justify the means.
Twenty years after peace activist Lim Su-kyung swore that she would cross the border between North and South Korea on foot, Argentine documentary filmmaker José Luis García goes in search of the young woman who was once known as "The Flower of Reunification."
This fascinating documentary offers an in-depth look at the high-stakes world of drug dealing and drug enforcement, featuring interviews with top-ranking government officials and such celebrities as Woody Harrelson, Susan Sarandon, The Wire creator David Simon and rappers Eminem, 50 Cent and Rick Ross.
Director Jorge Hinojosa blends pulp fiction imagery with ambitious biographical digging to tell the story of legendary pimp/author Iceberg Slim, whose gritty and poetic books about ghetto life gave birth to Street Lit. Interviews include Chris Rock, Ice-T, Snoop Dogg and Quincy Jones.
When Pinaskin Ottawa disappeared from Manawan, Québec, no one saw him leave. His brother struggles to not lose hope, looking for clues and continuing his search. Stark images of a winter landscape scattered with fragments of human existence emphasize this poetic and chilling tale of loss.
Lebanon's brief flirtation with space travel in the 1960s becomes a poignant metaphor for the Arab world's utopian dreams in this riveting documentary.
In the very waters where Melville's Pequod gave chase to Moby Dick, Leviathan captures the collaborative clash of man, nature, and machine. Shot on a dozen cameras — tossed and tethered, passed from fisherman to filmmaker — this is a cosmic portrait of commercial fishing as it's never been seen.
John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam pay tribute to their late Monty Python colleague Graham Chapman in this hilarious, 3-D animated adaptation of Chapman's brazenly fictionalized life story.
A new restoration of the legendary, rarely seen 1967 agit-prop classic from celebrated filmmakers Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, William Klein, Joris Ivens, Agnès Varda and Claude Lelouch, which mixes fact and fiction in an angry rebuke to the US war in Vietnam.
Director Julien Temple (The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, The Filth and the Fury) surveys the past century of London's tumultuous history in this vibrant documentary.
Love, Marilyn takes an intimate look into the never-before-seen letters, diaries and notebooks of Marilyn Monroe. Appearing on screen to perform Marilyn’s words are renowned contemporary actresses, including Marisa Tomei, Uma Thurman, and Glenn Close.
In this irresistibly zany, sharp-witted documentary, director Simon Ennis introduces us to an unforgettable group of characters whose obsession with the moon and lunar colonization has given birth to utopian dreams of truly galactic proportions.
Academy Award®–winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) explores the charged issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, following a trail from the first known protest against clerical sexual abuse in the United States and all way to the Vatican.
The new film from Thai master and Palme d'Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul is at once a soothing lullaby, a film à clef, fragments from an unrealized project, and a fascinating experiment in collaboration.
This remarkable new documentary explores the story behind one of the most iconic images of the twentieth century: the 1932 photograph of workmen taking their lunch while perched on a girder high above New York City.
With dazzling nature photography, Academy Award®–nominated director Markus Imhoof (The Boat is Full) takes a global examination of endangered honeybees — spanning California, Switzerland, China and Australia — more ambitious than any previous work on the topic.
This extraordinary testament to survival from Emmy-winning producer/director Janet Tobias brings to light a story that remained untold for decades: that of thirty-eight Ukrainian Jews who survived World War II by living in caves for eighteen months.
A small town in Quebec prepares for a coming apocalypse in this riveting — and scathing — portrait of everyday people facing a catastrophic environmental event.
Lauded artist-filmmaker Heinz Emigholz (Schindler's Houses) offers an exquisite excursus on the work of pioneering French architect Auguste Perret, including privileged views of his innovative concrete structures in Algeria and such magnificent landmarks as Paris' Art Deco Théâtre des Champs Elysées.
Director Sophie Fiennes reunites with philosophical provocateur Slavoj Žižek for this follow-up to their hit The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, in which Žižek applies his inimitable and penetrating insights to films both famous and obscure as he interprets their overt and concealed meanings. Fiennes and Žižek will join us onstage following this world premiere screening.
Rafea: Solar Mama follows the groundbreaking journey of one Bedouin mother living on the Jordan-Iraq border who, along with thirty illiterate grandmothers from around the world, will travel to The Barefoot College in India to become Solar Engineers.
This intimate documentary portrait directed by Vice Magazine editor Andy Capper follows hip hop legend Snoop Dogg as he undergoes a spiritual odyssey/career reinvention in Jamaica and emerges as the rechristened "Snoop Lion."
Rob Stewart follows his outstanding documentary Sharkwater with this impassioned, angry and enduringly hopeful call to arms against our destruction of our planet's precious marine life.
Marina Zenovich dives into the mysterious details of Roman Polanski's arrest in Switzerland in 2009, which came suspiciously soon after the release of her ground-breaking 2008 documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. In this follow-up investigation, Zenovich raises fresh questions about legal manipulation, media distortion and power politics.
Obsessive cineastes detail their byzantine conspiracy theories about the secret themes and messages hidden within Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, in director Rodney Ascher's fascinating, kaleidoscopic deconstruction of a horror classic.
Cheekily fun and intellectually absorbing, Jamie Kastner’s meticulously researched documentary casts a new light on the much-maligned musical genre, contending that the disco era represented a moment of mass liberation for women, African-Americans and gay men.
Director Treva Wurmfeld captures an indelible portrait of the complex relationship between playwright/actor Sam Shepard and his close friend Johnny Dark as they prepare forty years of their correspondence for publication, stirring up old memories both good and bad.
Toronto-based actors and filmmakers Kyle Humphrey and Graydon Sheppard premiere a new episode of their smash-hit internet sensation Shit Girls Say on the big screen.
From sexual taboos and young women coming of age to comedic documentaries, this programme asks challenging questions about the consequences of our decisions, taking us from mountainous villages of Vietnam to a small town in Quebec preparing for the apocalypse.
The perennial theme of family is spotlighted in this programme, linking stories of a father seeking to reconnect with his son through antiquated technology, a young Cree girl planning to be a mother, and a 3-D animated documentary about a woman's decision to give up her children.
Barry Avrich (Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project) recounts the life and troubled times of controversial Cineplex and Live Ent founder Garth Drabinsky, whose daring innovations and flamboyant personal style reshaped the Canadian entertainment industry.
Academy Award®–winning actor Javier Bardem produced this urgent new documentary about how colonization of the Western Sahara has displaced nearly 200,000 people to refugee camps. Following our screening, Bardem joins us to discuss how he found out about this catastrophic human rights issue, and was determined to bring the cause of the Saharan refugees to attention of the UN Assembly.
Filmmaker Dan Setton gained unprecedented access to the highest circles of the Palestinian leadership as he chronicles Prime Minister Salam Fayaad's quest to have Palestine recognized by the United Nations as an independent state.
Michael McGowan's Still is an exquisitely mounted and deeply affecting love story about one man's determination to create a suitable home for his ailing wife. Veterans James Cromwell and Genevieve Bujold are nothing short of magnificent as they mine the subtext in the story of a couple with a deep and complicated past.
Sarah Polley (Away From Her, Take This Waltz) makes her maiden voyage into documentary with this exploration of a family’s secrets, and the varying narratives that each member has created to explain their tangled past.
This pulse-racing real-life adventure follows two of Australia's greatest surf legends on their quest to hunt down and ride the Pacific's biggest and most dangerous waves. With 3D cameras installed on their boards, Ross Clarke-Jones and Tom Carroll defy middle age by pushing the limits of what they — and cinema technology — can do.
The primitive and mythical Aeolian Islands become the centre of the world when competing film productions arrive to shoot Robert Rossellini’s Stromboli alongside William Dieterle’s Vulcano.
The masterful new documentary from Wang Bing (West of the Tracks) is an intimate, observational portrait of a peasant family who eke out a humble existence in a small village set against the stunning mountain landscapes of China's Yunnan province.
Calling all documentary professionals and documentary lovers!
An intimate documentary that takes us inside the lives of tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams, during a year when debilitating injuries and life-threatening illness threatened to take them out of the game once and for all.
This captivating documentary explores the contemporary graffiti culture of Dakar, where painters, rappers and taggers have created a language of dissent and uncensored self-expression that gave prescient warning of the insurgency to come.
Works by Luther Price, Ben Rivers, William E. Jones and others resuscitate materials and curios from archives both public and private, pointing up their forever changing context and attendant shifts in meaning.
Rendered in raw, intimiste strokes, these portrait films bask in the paradoxical experience of being an artist whose aspirations belong to this world, as much as beyond. Artists include: Shumona Goel & Shai Heredia, Tito & Tito, Francesca Woodman, Friedl vom Gröller, Vincent Grenier and Festival favourite Nathaniel Dorsky.
The infamous case of the "West Memphis 3" — three teenagers who were imprisoned for a heinous crime, despite overwhelming evidence of their innocence — has galvanized support from both the grassroots and such high-profile advocates as Eddie Vedder, Johnny Depp, and Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. A live discussion follows the screening of this new documentary on the case and the movement it inspired.
Imbued with nostalgia and striking a wide range of emotional notes, filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel travels to the Lebanese refugee camp of Ain El Helweh to explore how the camp's displaced people use the World Cup series to articulate their own ideas of home, community, victory and hope.