Leninland

At the peak of Perestroika, in 1987, in the village of Gorki, where Lenin spent his last years, after a long construction, the last and most grandiose museum of the Leader was opened. Soon after the opening, the ideology changed, and the flow of pilgrims gradually dried up. Despite this, the museum still works and the management is looking for ways to attract visitors. Faithful to the Lenin keepers of the museum as they can resist the onset of commercialization. The film tells about the modern life of this amazing museum-reserve and its employees.

Shameless Propaganda

This feature documentary examines its own genre, which has often been called Canada's national art form. Released in the year of the NFB's 75th birthday, Shameless Propaganda is filmmaker Robert Lower's take on the boldest and most compelling propaganda effort in our history (1939-1945), in which founding NFB Commissioner John Grierson saw the documentary as a "hammer to shape society". All 500 of the films produced by the NFB until 1945 are distilled here for the essence of their message to Canadians. Using only these films and still photos from that era, Lower recreates the picture of Canada they gave us and looks in it for the Canada we know today. What he finds is by turns enlightening, entertaining, and unexpectedly disturbing.

The Certainty of Probabilities

1968, The Socialist Republic of Romania. Women catch up on the latest tendencies in beachwear, the young hippies of Hamburg are harshly criticized by Romanian students, while Nicolae Ceaușescu reads the famous defiance speech against the intervention of the Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia. Floating solemnly over all this is The Internationale, sung on a stadium by a crowd of pioneers dressed in white shirts and red ties. A certainty for each probability: the documentary is at the same time a history lesson and an ideological warning sign, the director’s endeavour permanently draws our attention to the functions of the propaganda film, yet without tarnishing the fascination that dwells in the core of the images, that of the figures that wave at us from a past buried in commonplaces and political parti pris.

Tenkrát 2 – Šance pro Slovensko

Tenkrát

When We Were Kings

It's 1974. Muhammad Ali is 32 and thought by many to be past his prime. George Foreman is ten years younger and the heavyweight champion of the world. Promoter Don King wants to make a name for himself and offers both fighters five million dollars apiece to fight one another, and when they accept, King has only to come up with the money. He finds a willing backer in Mobutu Sese Suko, the dictator of Zaire, and the "Rumble in the Jungle" is set, including a musical festival featuring some of America's top black performers, like James Brown and B.B. King.

Toma de Belchite y Teruel

Intercepted

Intercepted is a journey through Ukraine that reveals the banality of evil behind the Russian invasion with the shocking juxtaposition of two realities: the Ukrainians who have been suffering and resisting the war violence, and the Russian military, and civilians, who have been perpetrating it.

The Viking Sagas

Dr Janina Ramirez travels across glaciers and through the lava fields of Iceland to find out about one of the most compelling of the great Viking stories - the Laxdaela Saga. This hour-long film explores how the unique literary achievements of the Saga writers were possible at a time of such immense cultural, political and religious upheaval.

Memory Books

In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.

Buddha Wild: Monk in a Hut

Buddhist monks open up about the joys and challenges of living out the precepts of the Buddha as a full-time vocation. Controversies swirling within modern monastic Buddhism are examined, from celibacy and the role of women to racism and concerns about the environment.

In the Name of All Canadians

Hot Docs will commemorate Canada's 150th anniversary of Confederation with the commissioning of In the Name of All Canadians, a compilation of six short documentaries inspired by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. From Indigenous rights to multiculturalism to the controversial ‘notwithstanding clause,’ participating filmmakers have each selected a specific aspect of the Charter to explore, looking at how it resonates in the stories of their fellow Canadians.

Cincinnati's Rock 'N Roll Legends

An excellent comprehensive look at all the music that came out of Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati "Rock Legends" "James Brown" "King Records" "Pure Prairie League" "Lemon Pipers" "Syd Nathan" WEBN "Bootsy Collins" "Lonnie Mack" "The Who concert 1979" "Rick Derringer"

The Changing Face Of Salford Collection

Between 1968 and 1970, J M Goodger, a lecturer at the University of Salford, made a film record of the living conditions in the slums of Ordsall, Salford, which were then in the process of being demolished. Under the title 'The Changing face of Salford', the film was in two parts: 'Life in the slums' and 'Bloody slums'.

NiiSoTeWak: Two Bodies, One Heart

NiiSoTeWak means “walking the path together.” Tapwewin and Pawaken are 10-year-old brothers trying to make sense of the world, their family and each other. They’re already grappling with some heady questions about identity. What does it mean to be a twin? What does it mean to be Cree? How do you define yourself when you’re forever linked to someone else? The twins discuss these questions with their two elder brothers — 22-year-old actor Asivak and 20-year-old basketball player Mahiigan — and their parents, Jules and Jake.

Karihwanoron: Precious Things

Yagorihwanirats, a Mohawk child from Kahnawake Mohawk Territory in Quebec, attends a unique and special school: Karihwanoron. It is a Mohawk immersion program that teaches Mohawk language, culture and philosophy. Yagorihwanirats is so excited to go to school that she never wants to miss a day – even if she is sick.

The 50 Year Argument

Follows the waves of literary, political, and cultural history as charted by the The New York Review of Books, America’s leading journal of ideas for over 50 years. Provocative, idiosyncratic and incendiary, the film weaves rarely seen archival material, contributor interviews, excerpts from writings by such icons as James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, and Joan Didion along with original verité footage filmed in the Review’s West Village offices.

Declutter

One Saturday morning, filmmaker Madison Thomas has a revelation: she’s just like her mother. As she thinks about a friend going through tough times, she feels the sudden urge to clean. Through the scrubbing and wiping and rinsing, Madison's thoughts drift to her mother — and her obsessive need to tidy. Madison’s mother survived a traumatic childhood: her own mother never reconciled what she went through at residential school. Cleaning offers moments of control that she didn’t have as a child. She’s fought hard, against all odds, to become a strong woman. They say trauma is in the genes, that it’s passed from one generation to the next. But strength is inherited too. Through rituals as simple as spending time together and smudging, Madison and her mother are beginning to mend the cycle of pain in their family. Declutter is an intimate look into a private moment between mother and daughter and the strength that carries them both.

Memories Revealed

Over the course of 10 months, a camera travels to Buenos Aires, Argentina and Hanover, Germany to meet with Magalí, María Belén, Ivana and Carla, the founding members of the Archivo De La Memoria Trans Argentina, the first existing Trans Archive in the world. Taking the shape of a photo-novel, the documentary not only recounts the founding members lives as trans women under the Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983), the AIDS epidemy, state repression and mass assassinations but also years of fighting for their rights, sorority and the exaltation of life and laughter in times of death. Filming each one of them is filming them embracing their new role as curators, archivists and historians while a collection of 7,000 photos goes through the filter of their memories.

Swing con Son

Music documentary about Billo Frómeta by director Rafael Marziano Tinoco from Venezuela.