A couple weeks ago, I went to see several documentaries over this year’s 10-day Hot Docs festival. I picked out 10 documentaries to see and here’s my list below and what I thought of them. You can read about the first five documentaries I saw in part 1 here.
- Massacre River
This documentary looks at ruling in 2013 that took away the citizenship of the many Dominican-born residents of Haitian descent. In the wake of the Dominican government opening up it’s regularization process for the Haitians born in the Dominican, the documentary follows Pikilina, a young woman trying to complete the paperwork to receive her citizenship for her herself and her children. This documentary was fascinating and sometimes hard to watch. It definitely stood out to me and I left having learned a few things about what was happening in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. - Push
Push follows low-income housing around the world as housing prices are surpassing the increases in income earned. The documentary focuses on a select few cities where housing costs increased at least three times the rate of income. This was another documentary that stood out to me as well. It was interesting to see how low income residents are being pushed out of their housing with little choice as to where they can live within their means. - Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies
I didn’t think this documentary was one of my favourites. Reflecting on what I watched, portions of it was interesting but not the entire thing. Even weeks later, I can’t remember too much from it to be able to have a discussion or impress people with my knowledge. - The Miracle of the Little Prince
This documentary was beautifully filmed but super slow. I was warned beforehand that it would be slow by a coworker. Sure enough it was slow and not what I was expecting it to be. I thought it would focus more on the certain languages that are losing their speakers, the history of the language and why it is losing speakers, and the use of The Little Prince to try reviving the language. Context wasn’t really provided for where the featured languages were spoken during the documentary (may have been mentioned in the credits at the end). The focus of documentary could’ve been better. - Toxic Beauty
Some of the information presented in this documentary I felt was common knowledge. How it was presented in this documentary was definitely eye-opening. The documentary focused on talc, particularly in talcum baby powder and Johnson & Johnson’s denial that in can cause cancer. It followed several female cancer survivors, the realization that their long time use of talcum powder caused their cancer and the fight they endure to bring this to the forefront. It was very interesting to watch this documentary.
