The Most Recent Movie You've Seen on Streaming, Broadcast TV, or Movie Theater?

But I love the absurdity of Mel Brooks humor.

Living under a 24-hour news cycle, it can be difficult to remember that every human on earth shares the same intensity of feeling—that each person has a life they care about as much as we care about ours. Often lost in the sprawling news events of our day is the incredible, overwhelming fact that there are people on the ground, behaving as we would behave, indeed being “us” in a different circumstance.

How do we remember? At Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, we look to art.

There’s a moment we’re trying to capture: friends mugging for the camera (The War Show), frustration at not being able to fund an important project (Libya in Motion), a teenaged girl wishing her parents were Michael Jackson and Rihanna (Sonita). The moment is when we recognize ourselves in someone else, when we see they are as deserving of love and protection as the people in our lives.

Here at Hot Docs, we are immigrants, we are the children of immigrants, we are the grandchildren of immigrants. And beyond. We know how crucial it has been that others have seen our humanity in the past, and we honour the richness of experience that pulls us all together.

In Ban This Series, we present a documentary from each nation whose citizens were denied entry into the U.S. due to a presidential executive order issued on January 27, 2017. By amplifying their stories, we celebrate the humanity and strength in each one of us.

BAN THIS SERIES: LIBYA IN MOTION
North American Premiere
Ban This Series: Documentaries from the seven countries included in the travel ban enacted by executive order on January 27, 2017.

From Tripoli to Benghazi, meet a grandmother sowing the national flag with relish, a young woman determined to become a film director, a fisherman philosopher, illegal migrants caught in limbo in a detention centre, a group of young filmmakers trying to fund their fiction film and many more. Made up of 13 short docs, Libya in Motion is an on-the-ground peek into the day-to-day resilience of those living in post-revolution Libya. Shot over the course of several years, the filmmakers chart the immediate wake of the civil war up to 2015, revealing remarkable stories of courage, recovery and struggle.

One of the short film directors Naziha Arebi will participate in a post-screening Skype Q&A.

Watched a short film, I've been looking for a relatively long time. Praise Netflix DVD service (that's something everyone assumed was a dead thing).

Garden of Words (2013)
One of the most underrated directors working today. Makoto
Shinkai makes visually stunning animated films that for me, are the most romantic films of all time.

McAllister has achieved something incredible here. The Reluctant Revolutionary is a stunningly humane portrait that shows vividly what’s at stake before leaving it bloody on the Formica floor of a battered concrete building. Fifty-two people died that day. The movement grew, Saleh left his office months later, but things are still burning in Yemen. This doc is the kind of Pulitzer Prize-winning work that boldly and at great risk to personal safety showcases how powerful media can be. It’s entertaining, yes, but it’s also film as indictment. Film as evidence. Film as historical document.

Syrian filmmaker and writer Marcelle Aleid participated in a post-screening discussion hosted by Harvard Seal Documentary Film Club.

Ultimately, many of the people in the film say that the war is about the soul of Sudan. The government “utilizes a ‘divide and rule’ policy,” says Ibrahim Khatir, an SPLA officer. “It categorizes Sudanese citizens along racial and ethnic lines, breaking them into Arabs and Blacks.” Arab identity is strongly promoted by the ruling National Congress Party, and African local languages and traditions are being lost in the process. “If we don’t answer the question of Sudanese identity the war will continue,” Seif Alislam says. Meanwhile, the people of the Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains continue singing and dancing, the beats in their music expressing their heritage both as Africans and as Sudanese.

“Watch this film with an open heart,” says kuka. “Despite years of adversity, the Sudanese people have retained — and even developed further — a signature strength and resilience and even joy. That is who we are, and that’s the main message of my film.”

I've seen that, but I don't think he's credited on the film as it was so minor.