Larissa Behrendt’s You Can Go Now and Sari Braithwaite’s Because We Have Each Other are both set to screen at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival next month.
The festival will serve as the international launchpad for Berendt’s You Can Go Now, screening as part of the Artscapes strand that showcases creative minds, artistic pursuits and inventive filmmaking.
The doc tracks the life and provocative work and writings of First Nations artist, Richard Bell. His polemics and creative outputs provide a lens through which to consider the last 50 years of First Nations activism in Australia and its links to global protest movements.
You Can Go Now premiered at Adelaide Film Festival last October and was released theatrically in Australia January 26 via Madman Entertainment. The film is produced by GoodThing Productions’ Nick Batzias, Charlotte Wheaton and Josh Milani, with executive producers Virginia Whitwell and Paul Wiegard.
Because We Have Each Other, which first premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival last August, will make its North American premiere at Hot Docs as part of the new Human Kind program, which highlights stories of kindness, connection, and collaboration.
A “slice-of-life” doc five years in the making, the film follows a neurodivergent, working-class family; Janet and Buddha and their five adult children. With too many pets and a whole lot of bills to pay, they’re dreaming of bigger futures in a society that refuses to see them.
Because We Have Each Other is produced by Arenamedia’s Chloe Brugale, with executive producers Robert Connolly and Robert Patterson.
This year, HotDocs – North America’s largest documentary festival, conference and market – celebrates its 30th anniversary. The line-up includes 214 films from 72 countries, with 53 per cent helmed by female directors.
The festival will open with Twice Colonized, directed by Danish director Lin Alluna, which captures Greenlandic Inuit lawyer and activist Aaju Peter, as she fights for the human rights of Indigenous people of the Arctic, working to bring her colonisers in Canada and Denmark to justice.
Hot Docs runs April 27 to May 7 in Toronto, Canada.