HotDocs, the world’s leading documentary film festival, is coming to Australia for the first time in June 2016.
The first edition of HotDocs down under will bring 24 films from 15 countries to Palace cinemas in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne.
Curated by artistic director Richard Moore, highlights include Jim: The James Foley Story, 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 has a special country focus on Australia this year, and two Australian documentaries – Charlie Hill Smith’s Motorkite Dreaming and Helen Kapalos’s A Life Of its Own – will have their world premiere.
“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,” said 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.”