First things first: Let’s congratulate the award winners at Hot Docs this year. The winner of Best Canadian Documentary went to Out of Mind, Out of Sight, a look at criminals with mental illness as they try to rehabilitate themselves in an asylum. Best International Documentary went to Waiting for August, a look at a Romanian teenager raising 6 siblings while her mother goes to work in a different city. The Audience Award has gone to The Backward Class. You can see all of the award winners here.

After seeing over 25 documentaries at the festival, I’m both exhausted and disappointed that I couldn’t see more. The most surprising part of the festival was how, for its size, there weren’t a lot of duds. As someone who approaches documentaries with hesitation, largely because of how the format can lead to uninspired filmmaking, I was surprised at how many documentaries found terrific subjects and innovative ways to tell their story. Below are my 10 personal favorites of the festival, along with a bonus pick. Information on distribution/availability is below as well, in case you’d like to find out if/when you can watch these great documentaries.

The Overnighters

By far my personal favorite of the new documentaries playing, The Overnighters is a roller coaster ride of a film. What starts out as a simple tale of a pastor trying to help out people in need spins out of control into something far more complex and devastating.

Availability: The film will be out in theaters this fall, presumably to give it an Oscar push. Be on the lookout for our interview with director Jesse Moss this fall.

Watchers of the Sky

Using the life of the man responsible for creating the word “genocide,” Watchers of the Sky is a moving look at people tirelessly fighting for justice, even though it’s unlikely they’ll succeed in their lifetime. Hopeful without being mawkish, wide-ranging without feeling spread thin, Watchers of the Sky is one of the year’s best documentaries.

Availability: In theaters this fall.

The Creator of the Jungle

The story of a true genius and artist, a man who simply wants to play with his toys and be left alone. In this case the man’s toys are an entire forest, and the results are jaw-dropping. A true definition of a festival gem, The Creator of the Jungle is well worth your time if you can see it.

Availability: Currently without distribution. Hopefully a distributor will snatch it up in due time, but if not be on the lookout for it on the festival circuit.

Read our interview with the director of The Creator of the Jungle HERE

No Lullaby

A mother and daughter’s attempt to break a cycle of abuse is simultaneously gut-wrenching and infuriating to watch. It’s the kind of story people need to see, no matter how hard it is to watch.

Availability: No North American distribution, but it will air on German TV next year.

Read our interview with the director of No Lullaby

Guidelines

A sort of more artistic take on Frederick Wiseman’s High School, Guidelines is a fascinating snapshot of a high school over one year. Through its striking cinematography, the film shows teenagers trying to find themselves between the freedom of youth outside of class and the strict rules imposed by their superiors in school.

Availability: There might be distribution in Canada through the National Film Board, but US distribution seems unlikely.

Actress

Robert Greene’s profile of his neighbor trying to get back into acting expands into something far more fascinating and complicated. Greene’s experimental approach, along with the haunting beauty of his film’s star, makes for a fascinating look into the artifice inherent in documentary filmmaking and our own lives.

Availability: Hopefully a release this year, but details are still unknown. Keep your eyes peeled for our interview with director Robert Greene and star Brandy Burre closer to the film’s release.

Whitey: The United States of America v. James J. Bulger

Documentary pro Joe Berlinger continues to prove why he’s one of the best in his field. Taking one of the most notorious criminals in US history, Berlinger makes a truly compelling argument against the status quo when it comes to Bulger’s sordid past. Fans of true crime stories shouldn’t miss this.

Availability: Expect a theatrical release this summer, and be sure to visit us closer to its release for our interview with director Joe Berlinger.

The Case Against 8

A look at the long, intense battle to declare California’s Proposition 8 as unconstitutional, The Case Against 8 is surprisingly involving despite its well-known outcome. Through its detailed look at the process of building an argument against Prop 8, The Case Against 8 shows how its central issue is more about human rights than politics.

Availability: A limited theatrical release in June, before airing on HBO in the US at the end of the month.

Joy of Man’s Desiring

I’ll admit, the film has slowly gone up in my estimation since seeing it. It’s a mostly wordless, but never boring look at human labour and the way people try to find happiness with dull, repetitive work.

Availability: Unknown at this time. Considering its brief length and 40+ minutes of nothing but operating machinery, don’t expect this to get a big release.

Private Violence

A well-done advocacy doc using two women, one an advocate for protecting abuse victims and the other a survivor of abuse, to highlight the complexities of trying to escape an abusive relationship. Anyone thinking a victim of domestic abuse can just walk away should watch this.

Availability: HBO has it, so expect a release sometime in the near future (fall/winter seems likely). Thankfully since HBO has this it should mean it’ll get plenty of exposure to the public.

Portrait of Jason

I included it as a bonus pick because it’s an older title, but it was overall the best documentary I saw at the festival. Both a fascinating look at one man’s life and a self-aware critique of documentary filmmaking, Portrait of Jason is challenging but essential viewing.

Availability: Milestone Films says they will be releasing the new, restored version of the film on DVD and Blu-Ray this year.

No Lullaby is a difficult film to watch, but that’s precisely why Helen Simon made it. Simon tells the story of Tina Reuther, a woman who was repeatedly abused sexually by her father while growing up. Tina never spoke out about her suffering, keeping it hidden and, eventually, repressing any memories of it. Years later, Tina got married and had a daughter, Floh. After divorcing, Tina had her parents look after Floh while she worked. It wasn’t until Floh was in her 20s when she revealed that Tina’s father sexually abused her as well, and unlike her mother Floh took action. She took Tina’s father to court, but the trial was such a horrifying experience for Floh she committed suicide shortly afterward.

Helen Simon uses a narrow, artistic approach to convey Tina and Floh’s stories. Despite Floh being dead, Simon considers her and Tina to be the two protagonists of her film. Simon only interviews Tina and Johanna, a former lover of Floh’s. The interviews are crosscut between Simon narrating transcripts from the trial, with different artistic compositions and shots playing over the narration. The neutral, emotionless narration combined with these shots provide an intense emotional reaction from hearing Tina and Floh’s experiences.

Helen Simon was gracious enough to sit down and talk with us in advance of No Lullaby’s world premiere at Hot Docs. We get into her visual style for the film, the role society plays in creating these types of stories, the stigma of being a victim, the lengths she had to go to in order to make her film, the risks she faces in releasing it, and much more. No Lullaby premieres Wednesday, April 30th at Hot Docs. You can learn more about the film, and buy tickets, here.

This is your graduation film from Munich Film School. Were you ever expecting your graduation film to get into a festival like Hot Docs?
Of course not [Laughs]. To tell you the truth this is my first feature film ever. The two films I made before were all hard. I’ve always done hard films but they were always short films. This is my first long film, and I knew that the subject would be extremely hard to sell or to get people interested in, to get them to watch. I am just so amazed and thankful that Hot Docs took it and said “Okay, this is important.” Yeah, I didn’t expect it at all.

When you say you make hard films, do you mean in terms of subject matter?
Yeah.

What draws you to that?
I don’t know. I think everybody does what they’re able to do, what they have a feeling for. It’s strange that I’ve always had this feeling for subjects that no one else really wants to look at, and that’s what I want to do. I want to talk about things people don’t want to talk about. Have them look at things that are important to look at but they just don’t want to look at them.

How did you find out about Tina? How did you convince her to do the film?
The film took four years to make, it was a really long process. I knew from the beginning that I would have to find a protagonist that’s strong enough to go through the process with me. It took me about 8-10 months just to find Tina. I went researching all over Germany and got into all the different institutions and associations that do work with sexual abuse victims. I tried to find someone who would be able to do this very intimate story because that’s what I wanted [from the beginning]. I had seen a lot of media coverage on sexual abuse, and I never liked it because it was just the surface. It never really got into why these things happened.

I heard about her story through someone else who had met Floh (Tina’s daughter) and told me about this story. I knew it had to be this story because it wasn’t easy. You have a mother who, in some way actually, she could have stopped it, she didn’t stop it. She had her reasons, it’s understandable, but it’s a difficult, complicated situation and that’s what I wanted to do. I met up with her and she said “Yes” right away. I didn’t have to convince her. She had the ultimate motivation. She couldn’t help her daughter, she failed, which was extremely hard on her. And for her, making this film was sort of [her saying] “I can’t save her anymore, but maybe this story can help someone else.”

It’s such an extraordinary story. Did it get any media attention in Germany?
No, no. It was covered in Munich where the court was. There was one or two articles in the papers on the trial but no, not nationally. It’s because these things happen too often, this is not a story that’s…it happens a lot.

What really interested me were your artistic choices when it came to finding footage to go along with your reading of the trial’s transcripts. Could you go into your process on how you came up with the visual style for those scenes?
There were two aspects of the film that were extremely hard [to make decisions on]. That was the second one. Finding a visual aesthetic and images for that storyline of [reading text from] the protocols (Note: Protocols refers to the transcripts of the trial). It was a long process. We had five boxes full of protocols, and I had to make the story out of these, I don’t know how many pages we had. I knew from the beginning that I would need to find something that on the one side could carry the protocols but doesn’t go beyond them. It can’t be too much. I had to have the courage, and I say that specifically because these kinds of films lack the courage to just be experimental or do something that’s a little crazy, like you don’t know if it’s going to work. Like the shots of the forest, who knows? Is this gonna work for anybody? I had the feeling it might, it felt right for Floh, but I didn’t know. To do that with such a topic that’s so hard…it’s hard to find visuals for that.

What was also clear was that you have to have two different visual perspectives, one for Tina and one for Floh. I oriented myself by the psychological aspect of the two protagonists and how they experienced the abuse. I knew that, for Tina, the abuse was long gone and hidden somewhere in the back of her mind. There was no time in the interview where she was able to talk about what had happened or specifically say what her father did. I was glad because I didn’t want to get into that with her, but I knew that I would have to find visuals for that. When I talked to her and found out about her story it was clear it had to be, you know, tableaux. It had to be stills that just depict this idea of being locked in, but it’s so far away you can’t really reach it.

On the other hand you have Floh who was totally different. It was right at the surface with her. She carried it around with her. She wasn’t able to suppress it the way that her mother did. Those images had to be alive. And then I had to find images for the jury and about the situation. I decided to use seasons because that was one of the first questions from the protocols, what time of year [the abuse] happened more frequently. I thought that was so absurd. She was like 6 years old, who gives a shit? You know what I mean? And that’s just the way that they deal with these things. They don’t know how to deal with it either. And I just thought okay, let’s go with that and try to find different times of year.

How much of the film was an intuitive approach for you?
[Pause] All of it. [Laughs]

I had spent so much time with Tina and Floh, which is a little macabre because Floh had been dead and I just spent time with the protocols. It was just like spending time with her, and I felt so close with them that I had this idea about the shots of the forewst. I tried it out and hoped for the best.

There’s an implication in the documentary, not from you but from the situation itself, that one of the reasons why Tina might still be alive today is because she never spoke out. And by doing the right thing, Floh ends up paying with her life.
It’s an interesting observation, it never crossed my mind to think that way but I can understand how you can. And I thought maybe it’s true, in some sense it might just be true. Because all of this happens within a context and a structure. It’s a social structure that sort of defines how you’re able to make it in this life. I don’t believe it’s coming out of yourself. It’s just, you know, nature makes us strong or not it’s the social context in which we grow up in. and the way we live today it’s still dominant if you close up and you don’t talk about the things you’re not supposed to talk about and if you act like people want you to act you’ll survive better. I guess that is how it is today.

You only interview Tina and Johanna (Floh’s partner) in your film. Did you consider interviewing other people and getting different perspectives?
That was a deliberate decision. I wanted the absence of Floh to be felt. I don’t know if I succeeded in that, but it was important for me. It was a critical moment in the decision making because a lot of people told me “No you can’t do that, you got to interview more people that knew Floh so we can get a better image of her.” I understood that, I understand that people want that, but that’s not the reality. The reality is that she’s gone, and there’s a huge absence. That’s painful and hard, but I think it’s right. I didn’t go out [looking for other people to interview]. I wanted Johanna because it was Floh’s biggest love, and she was able to tell us things about Floh that Tina never knew. Apart from that I didn’t…no. Every perspective would have been an idea of something we don’t know, so let’s leave it at that.

Something your film touches on is a disturbing trend in society where people can’t accept victims. It seems it’s hard for people to grasp the concept that a person isn’t responsible for something terrible that happens to them. The verdict in the trial shows that, because it implies Floh was complicit with the abuse.
I think there are different aspects to the idea of being a victim that are screwed up. On the one hand you actually have the problem with people being victimized, and just being a victim. That was also an aspect that was very important for me when I chose the protagonist. I wanted someone that was strong and had a life that I could show in some sense, and Tina is a strong person that can talk very well. That was important too, that she could get to the point. This idea of being a victim is kind of easy to us, you know, “She’s the victim,” and that makes it easy because you don’t have to see eye to eye to that person. You don’t have to respect them.

On the other hand, if there’s a victim there’s always someone who’s done something bad. There’s always the other side. And I actually believe that, if we talk specifically about sexual abuse, it is a problem of patriarchy. I do believe it has a lot to do with that. And that’s very hard to take for a society because all of society is built upon that ideal. A topic like [sexual abuse] just rips into that and says “Wait, look at this. Look at how we are, how this system is treating children or treating women.” And this happens to men too, but that’s also patriarchy, there’s no difference. So we can’t deal with victims because they show us what’s going wrong with our system.

When I hear stories about someone getting hurt, I hear people say “Why didn’t they do anything?” in response, and it’s an absurd mentality. The idea that, when something is brought on to someone that brings great harm, their inaction is somehow wrong or makes them wrong.
It’s their fault that it’s happening to them, because they’ve acted somehow wrong and it’s not…well I guess it’s because we have a structural problem. It’s a structural problem and you can’t…That’s why it’s so hard to make a film about it, because on the one hand you really have to do an emotional film in order to get people interested and have them feel what’s happening. On the other hand you can’t make it too emotional because…

It gets exploitative or manipulative.
Yeah.

You’re talking about Tina’s story, but it’s also a symbol of legal and social injustices. How are you combining these two approaches? You’re clearly telling a personal story but you also want to make a grander statement.
That was one of the biggest problems for me. I wanted, at the end of the film, like a [title card] that says “so and so many children get abused every year” and make this social statement. I came into it with that political aspect, and at the end it was clear I couldn’t do that anymore. This is such a personal film. You can’t break it. That hurt a little, because I wanted it deeply, but it wouldn’t have helped the film. I’m so grateful that I was allowed to have the protocols of the trial. Without the trial the film would not have been the film. The trial makes it political, it gives it a social aspect that it never would have had with just the personal story.

Did you have any issues getting the protocols?
Yeah, it wasn’t easy. I had a lot of issues, to tell you the truth. The other aspect that was extremely hard was that I needed to get the signature from the perpetrator.

Really?
Yeah, from Tina’s father. He had to allow me to make the film. That’s why we had 4 years to make it. I spent half a year trying to convince him to give me a signature so I could make the movie. That was going through hell because I spent 3 or 4 times a week talking to him, and he tried to manipulate me. It was really hardcore, but he gave me the signature. I still don’t know why, but he gave it to me.

Could you go into some more detail about getting his signature?
To tell you the truth I don’t really know. I knew I needed it, and I also knew that I would never get it if I had a false state of mind. I would definitely need to respect him, and see him in the same way that I would see Tina, emotionally and open up to him. You have to do that, otherwise don’t try. That was very hard. It got interesting because we spent so much time with each other, and he was lying throughout. He still believes he’s innocent, that he never did anything, but he was emotionally very ill. He tried to manipulate me the way he manipulated others. It was this huge thing for me to stick to the facts, that no matter what he does you respect him and you treat him like anybody else, and you open up to him and you stay opened. I think that, at the end of the day, he was a very lonely person. He was very ill and very lonely, and having this long contact with someone for over half a year was actually the aspect that helped him to open up to me. I don’t think he actually wanted to help [Floh or Tina]. I think that he, in this sick way, wanted to help me, and that’s why he gave me his signature.

Are you still in contact with Tina?
I was there over Easter. We’re really in close contact, that’s very important to me. Not only am I extremely grateful to her, but she had the hardest job in this film. I just really loved her in a sense. It’s unbelievable how she’s able to be so honest today. I don’t know if I could ever be that honest.

You open the film with Floh’s suicide note. This interested me because, maybe I’m just used to other approaches to similar subject matter, but you immediately let the audience know the outcome of this story. I think other filmmakers would have approached it from a more chronological perspective. You’d see the story as it actually unfolded, and would have saved Floh’s suicide for the ending. What made you decide to open with that?
We had arguments on how to do that. For me it was…I had to get all the surface information out of the way because it’s about something different. It’s about really getting deep into it. I don’t want to build up to it. I want the audience to know right at the beginning what this is about. To understand that the fall is a big one. The protagonist is dead, who we’re talking about is dead, and that makes a point right at the beginning. Once that gets out of the way, we have the freedom to get into why it happens because that’s what I wanted to tell. For me it was extremely important for people to understand the complex structures that are built around things like sexual abuse in the family system. It’s extremely complex.

Has she seen the film?
No. She can’t.

There are moments where she’s going through photo albums. She agreed to do the film, but how did you feel about making her dive into these traumatic memories?
Before I started the film, I did some schooling on how to be with deeply traumatized people. I tried to prepare myself for these interviews. What was clear was that [the interviews] always had to be the same time of day, always the same length, and it had to have a very safe environment for her. I tried to make that happen, to make it safe as possible. We always did 1, 1.5 hours every time. Every time it was like a bomb exploding, and we got really fast, really deep, and that surprised me as well. I think what was important that I didn’t hold back. I felt like she doesn’t want to, she can’t, so I’m not going to. I’m going to go in there with her. I’m going to dive in there with her even if I’m shocked and a little scared because I don’t really know how to handle it. I’m responsible. She’s being re-traumatized every time we are having an interview. Definitely. I am responsible. This is what she wants, she’s going there and I’m going there with her. We stuck through it together.

Have you heard anything from Tina’s family?
The family threatened me before I made the film that they would sue me afterwards. She has a brother, and he threatened to sue me. This is our [world premiere] here in Canada so I don’t think anything’s going to happen, but our next screening will be in Munich which is their hometown.

Are you nervous?
Yeah. I’ll see what will happen then.

Do you have anything planned for the future?
I’m already working on a new film. It’s about child trafficking. I love [making hard films], I need it or otherwise I don’t make a film. I need something that I really believe in and I feel has to be made. I’ve been researching it for the last 6 months. We now have a TV station coming into the project, and I’m going to be doing a film on a home for children that, for some reason or another, got out of child trafficking in Europe. They’ve been prostituted and terrible, terrible things have happened. They land in a home somewhere in Bulgaria where no one gives a shit. The State pushes them aside, they’re not allowed to go back to their families, they don’t have a future and no one cares. That’s where I’m going, and I’m going to make a film about them.

You bookend the film with two shots: It opens with the camera moving toward a house, and it closes with the camera moving away from it. It gives off the feeling that this is anybody’s story.
My intent was exactly that. This is what happens, maybe happens, behind your neighbour’s house. Behind the walls of that house.

With almost 200 documentaries playing at Hot Docs, the amount of variety on display is quite staggering. Social issues, personal stories, biographies, abstract docs and true crime stories are some examples of the plethora of topics regularly seen at the festival every year. This group of four films highlight the vast differences and fundamental similarities between the many films presented to audiences over the next two weeks. These four docs (a meditation on labour, a writer touring across America, a tragic story of injustice, a group of outcasts  uniting together to entertain) look different on the surface, but all of them focus on human stories.

The Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24 to May 4 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. To find out more information about what’s playing or buy tickets, go to www.hotdocs.ca

Joy of Man’s Desiring

Denis Côté’s latest film opens with a close-up of a woman speaking to someone off camera. “Be polite, respectful, honest. Or I’ll destroy you if I want to,” she says calmly. What follows is 70 minutes of mostly wordless footage of industrial workers at their jobs, with the exception of some fictional conversations between workers (actually actors) toward the end.

Côté addresses plenty of big, rich ideas throughout Joy of Man’s Desiring. The relationship between man and machine, the kind of non-stop, repetitive tasks that come with working, and how humans try to find accomplishment or happiness through their mundane work are some of the more interesting topics brought up in the film. Côté doesn’t do much with his film’s themes though, seemingly content with just bringing them up rather than exploring them.

While Côté’s substance lacks depth, his style seriously impresses. His precise framing, combined with Nicholas Roy’s editing along with terrific sound design by Frédéric Cloutier & Clovis Gouaillie, makes Joy of Man’s Desiring an aesthetically pleasing experience. It’s an  interesting docu/fiction hybrid, but a minor work nonethless.

Harmontown

Dan Harmon, the creator of Community, is also the host of a podcast that Harmontown gets its title from. Harmon is known for being completely honest with people, and when he got a little too honest about behind the scenes drama on Community NBC fired him. Harmon used his unemployment as an opportunity to take his podcast on a live tour across America, taking co-host Jeff Davis, “Dungeon Master” Spencer and girlfriend Erin McGathy along. Director Neil Berkeley has made a funny, raw and enjoyable documentary that can appeal to fans of Harmon as well as people unfamiliar with his work.

The point Berkeley makes throughout his film is how Harmon’s openness about his problems (at one point he brings an audience member on stage to mediate a serious argument between him and his girlfriend; another time he dedicates his show to discussing depression with audience members), along with his ability to bring humour into these serious topics, has a therapeutic effect on people. Different people tell Harmon how Community helped get them through personal traumas or finally gave them confidence to do things they wouldn’t normally do (one woman says she would have been “too chickenshit” to meet Harmon if it wasn’t for his show). This message is best exemplified through Spencer, an introverted Dungeons and Dragons fan who went from an audience member at a taping to a fan favourite on the podcast.

Before Harmontown slips into praising its subject too highly, Berkeley steps back a bit to show how self-destructive and self-hating Harmon can be. At first he’s taken aback by the generosity of his fans, amazed that they’re happy to just watch him be himself, but eventually he starts to hate being seen as a hero. Most of Harmontown‘s last act goes into much darker territory than one would anticipate, and that decision is what elevates this beyond a boring road trip doc. Harmontown may not be a very memorable documentary, but it’s funny and entertaining enough to earn a recommendation for Harmon fans (not that they need one).

No Lullaby

No Lullaby is a powerful documentary, but an incredibly tough one to sit through. Director Helen Simon films Tina Reuther, a woman now in her late 50s dealing with the suicide of her daughter Floh. Tina was sexually abused by her father as a child, and for years she repressed those memories while trying to make her own family. It wasn’t until Floh was in her early 20s that she admitted Tina’s father also sexually abused her since the age of 5, and Floh’s decision to take her grandfather to court leads to devastating consequences.

Interviews with Tina and one of Floh’s friends are intercut with a narrator monotonously reading transcripts of the trial. The sterile quality of the narration, combined with Simon’s stark footage accompanying it, make Floh and Tina’s graphic testimonies hit like a gut punch. The tactic is extremely effective, and by the time the jury reaches its verdict it’s hard not to feel numb from how much injustice is on display.

Viewers willing to handle the tough material should watch No Lullaby, as its impact is undeniably strong. Through her simple and artistic approach, Simon handles Tina’s story respectfully, putting the emphasis on how much society failed Tina and Floh. The implication that Tina stayed alive because of her silence might be the most disturbing aspect of No Lullaby; stories like hers are necessary reminders of how much the systems meant to help victims can end up hurting them even more.

Stay tuned to our Hot Docs 2014 coverage for an interview with No Lullaby director Helen Simon.

Before The Last Curtain Falls

“Gardenia” was a stage show made up of transsexuals and drag queens in their 60s and 70s performing pieces based on their lives. The show became a surprise hit, and its performers spent two years travelling the world doing shows. Before The Last Curtain Falls starts as the “Gardenia” cast come back to their hometown of Ghent, Belgium, to put on their final show.

Thomas Wallner combines performances from “Gardenia” with profiles of several cast members, getting a sense of their lives as they get ready to end their two-year journey. The cast make for an expectedly eclectic bunch: Danilo works full-time as a janitor at a brothel; Richard is a nurse who left his job to follow his passion of performing in the show; Gerrit used to be known as Sylvia, but in his older years has gone back to living as a man in order to work.

A portrait begins to emerge of this group of people as constant fighters, and amazingly their strength doesn’t appear to have weakened one bit. They’ve all led difficult lives, but even in “the autumn of their lives” (as the opening titles state) they’re still looking for love and happiness. There’s a level of defiance and individuality to “Gardenia’s” cast that’s admirable all on its own.

And when Wallner does film everyone together on stage the results are excellent. The cinematography is gorgeous, and some moments in “Gardenia” are moving when combined with the terrific camerawork. The repetitive, meandering final act feels like the film is desperately looking for an ending before giving up, but it’s “Gardenia” and its cast that makes Before The Last Curtain Falls worth seeking out.