The Secret Life of Words

A solitary nurse bonds with a badly burned patient who survived an accident on an oil rig.

WAJBA

A mother and her son find themselves in an awkward situation where they live in the same building but they're separated due to different reasons. Mahmood develops a system to solve this issue and the situation starts to heat up.

Nanook of the North

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

Against the Tide

A remote and wild island on the west coast of Scotland is home to a small group of people that live in deep connection with the land, the sea and the weather. For different reasons, they left their city life to escape their inner demons and to live as eco-friendly and sustainable as possible.

Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Adrenaline

For more than 40 years Kathryn Bigelow has been making films that explore male violence. With movies like Blue Steel, Point Break, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, the Oscar winning American filmmaker has impressed with hard-hitting moviemaking that holds a mirror up to contemporary America and the world.

Tommy e gli altri

Snow Cake

A drama focused on the friendship between a high-functioning autistic woman and a man who is traumatized after a fatal car accident.

Rain Man

When car dealer Charlie Babbitt learns that his estranged father has died, he returns home to Cincinnati, where he discovers that he has a savant older brother named Raymond and that his father's $3 million fortune is being left to the mental institution in which Raymond lives. Motivated by his father's money, Charlie checks Raymond out of the facility in order to return with him to Los Angeles. The brothers' cross-country trip ends up changing both their lives.

The New Beachcombers

John Constable and his family return to Gibsons to find a new cast of characters who will battle over the fate of the now condemned Molly's Reach and Nick's old salvage business.

Casual Workers

An abstract perspective into two young South African workers in the heart of Johannesburg's industrial sector during Covid-19

Adam

Adam, a lonely man with Asperger's Syndrome, develops a relationship with his upstairs neighbor, Beth.

The Last Casino

A University teacher finds three bright students and decides to teach them how to count cards to make lots of money. As they learn how to play the casinos, things get tricky when the debt owing teacher informs them that their front man wants restitution for loses in about a weeks time. The three students decide to hit all the major casinos in Ontario and Quebec until discovered.

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.

Polytechnique

A dramatization of the Montreal Massacre of 1989 where several female engineering students were murdered by an unstable misogynist.

A Day, That Year

5 years old Yang spends an afternoon with his mother on a shopping trip. When he throws a tantrum after feeling neglected, she decides to punish him by walking away. A seemingly harmless punishment eventually becomes a pivotal childhood experience for Yang that will forever change him.

Space Boy

Tai-shian is locked away in his own autistic universe, totally lost to the world. His parents spend every day looking after him, rendering Tai-shian’s little sister Debby completely invisible to her parents…until one day, when both parents are gone, and Debby finds a new task thrust upon her.

The Boy Who Could Fly

Milly and Louis, and their recently-widowed mom, Charlene, move to a new neighborhood. Once there, they all deal with a variety of personal problems, but Milly finds a friend in Eric, her autistic next door neighbor. Eric has a fascination with flight, and as the story progresses, he exerts an enthralling force of change on all those around him.

Porcupine Lake

During a hot and hazy summertime in northern Ontario, 13-year-old Bea wants a best friend more than anything else, but when she meets boisterous Kate, she gets more than she imagined. A story of bravery, small-town summer love, and the secret world of girls.

The Wild

At her mother's rambling behest, Josie enlists best friend and unofficial chauffeur Stanley, to search for clues after her sister, Andrea, mysteriously goes missing from a bar in the next town over. Eccentric roaming artists, less-than-helpful locals, and a shadowy secret society lead to more clues than answers but one thing keeps coming back; The Wild. Maybe there is more to the family curse that has lingered over Josie's head all of these years.

Wildflower

One day Sammy and his younger sister Ellie happen upon a cabin where Alice, a young, partially deaf girl with epilepsy is being kept by her abusive stepfather. The three soon become friends and hope to get Alice an education and help her escape from the torture she undergoes daily. However, Alice's stepfather soon finds out about the friendship Alice has struck up and punishes her brutally. This story of friendship and youth shows that everyone is human and deserves to be treated so, no matter their disability or weakness.