It’s entirely possible that an early work by the next Atom Egoyan or David Cronenberg will screen on Wednesday night at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. With the 2013 Student Film Showcase featuring the best from post-secondary schools around the country and the Jump Cuts Young Filmmakers Showcase kicking off the evening with Toronto-area high-school students’ films, the night will be a coming-out party for a new crop of talent. Judging by the polished creativity of some of the entries, it’s safe to say that young people are more prepared than ever to start telling stories on film from an early age.

According to CBC’s Chris Boyce, the goal of this weekend’s CBCMusic.ca Festival is twofold. First and foremost, the CBC wants to celebrate Canadian music. Second, it wants to celebrate CBC Music, the broadcaster’s online music service, which launched a little over a year ago.

For today’s final instalment of Hot Docs daily, we’ve decided to defer in part to the festival’s official juries, who announced their 2012 award winners at a ceremony held on Friday night. The Best Canadian Feature and Best International Feature winners will have encore screenings this evening, and we’re happy to get behind both selections.

In fact, before Nisha Pahuja’s excellent The World Before Her () took Best Canadian Feature honours, we’d already earmarked it for a recommendation. For early birds, the film will still screen as originally planned (11 a.m., at the Isabel Bader Theatre), but this evening’s bonus presentation (6:30 p.m.) is a welcome a option for those who prefer leisurely starts to their Sunday mornings. Either way, Pahuja’s less-than-optimistic look at the position of women in contemporary India is worth working into your plans.

With respect to Best International Feature-winner Call Me Kuchu, we can’t yet offer a first-hand opinion. But this account of gay rights activism in Uganda—a hotbed of vicious, state-sponsored homophobia—has all the makings of a powerful viewing experience. In addition to their Hot Docs jury prize, filmmakers Malika Zouhali-Worrall and Katherine Fairfax Wright can boast of a Teddy Award from January’s Berlin Film Festival, which clearly bodes well for this evening’s bonus screening (6 p.m., The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema).

Also receiving an encore presentation (6:15 p.m., at the soon-to-be-shuttered Cumberland) is Ariel Nasr’s The Boxing Girls of Kabul (), which claimed Hot Docs’ Inspirit Foundation Pluralism Prize.

Because we were only lukewarm on that film, we’re offering a bonus recommendation of our own: Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet (, 4 p.m., TIFF Bell Lightbox 1). Like a heavy-metal counterpart to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jim Vile’s film is the inspiring story of a former guitar prodigy who’s defied all odds to conquer a debilitating (and theoretically fatal) diagnosis.

For our full index of festival reviews, head over to our handy Hot Docs hub.

Detropia sees the directors of Jesus Camp turn their lens on Detroit, a city in dire need of economic salvation.

With Detropia (), from Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, Hot Docs schedulers have saved one of the fest’s best for last. Fresh from an award-winning world premiere at Sundance, the Jesus Camp co-directors’ latest makes its international debut this evening (5:45 p.m. at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema) in its one and only Hot Docs presentation. Unsurprisingly, all advance tickets have sold, but we reckon a spell in the rush line will be worth your while.

A dystopian vision of urban decay, Detropia surveys the devastating fallout of Detroit’s economic collapse. Once a gleaming symbol of the American dream, the city has lost half of its manufacturing jobs in the last decade, and, with them, nearly a million residents. In something of a departure from their previous projects, Grady and Ewing adopt an impressionistic style that appeals as much to the senses as to the intellect, and succeed in capturing both the haunting beauty of the desolate metropolis and the desperation of those that remain.

Today’s second recommendation is world-premiere selection One Day After Peace (), which will screen for a third and final time this afternoon (4 p.m., the ROM Theatre). In this powerful, refreshingly non-partisan look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, filmmakers Erez Luafer and Miri Laufer profile Robi Damelin, a South African–born Israeli who, in 2002, lost her son to the bullet of a Palestinian sniper. Rather than seek retribution, Damelin returns to her homeland to meet with participants in its post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Committee. Her hope is to better understand the nature of forgiveness, and, potentially, to apply the Committee’s lessons to her personal struggle.

If you’re in the mood for lighter fare, we suggest you head to the Regent to catch the fest’s final screening of GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (, 6:30 p.m.). Director Brett Whitcomb’s nostalgic tribute revisits GLOW’s late-’80s glory days, when the titular troupe of lady luchadores shot to cult stardom thanks to their knack for breaking hearts and backs alike. Combining present-day interviews with archival clips of spandex-and-spangles action, Whitcomb provides a warm and illuminating account of a largely forgotten kitsch curiosity.

For our full index of festival reviews, head over to our handy Hot Docs hub.

American excess: You don't build a 90,000 square ft. home without it.

Hot Docs 2012 may be winding down, but it’s by no means cooling off, and the festival’s closing weekend will feature a host of first-rate selections. Topping our recommendation round-up today is Sundance award-winner The Queen of Versailles (, 8:45 p.m. The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema), an extraordinary look at the lifestyle of one rich and feckless family, from celebrated photographer and documentarian Lauren Greenfield.

In 2007, Greenfield befriended Jackie Seigel, a former Miss Florida and the wife of a billionaire timeshare mogul. Together with their eight children, the couple planned to construct the largest private residence in the United Sates, until 2008′s mortgage crisis put their literally palatial undertaking on hold. As their empire of excess begins to crumble, Greenfield’s candid access inspires plenty of eat-the-rich schadenfreude, but also, surprisingly, a modicum of sympathy.

You may experience a similar sense of ambivalence while watching Jeff Dorn and Catherine Bainbridge’s Smoke Traders ( 3:45 p.m., Cumberland 2), which documents the impact of grey market cigarette-running within eastern Canada’s Mohawk Nation. The RCMP deem the practice illegal, but the traders dispute the validity of anti-contraband laws, and point out that the tobacco has provided a crucial source of income to otherwise poverty-stricken communities. Focusing on an enterprising factory owner, and a runner who hopes to leave smuggling behind, Dorn and Bainbridge invite viewers to draw their own conclusions.

In The Betrayal (), Norwegian filmmaker Karen Winther’s focus is herself, and her capricious history of political extremism. Once a member of an Olso-based faction of leftist radicals, she later became mole for a rival group of militant neo-Nazis. This unsparing self-portrait sees Winther confront her troubled past. Her confessions suggest that, for some, hatred may be as potently addictive as anything peddled by the subjects of Smoke Traders. The Betrayal screens at 9 p.m. at the ROM Theatre.

For our full index of festival reviews, head over to our handy Hot Docs hub.

We begin today’s installment of Hot Docs Daily with a reminder that all of the festival’s pre-6 p.m. screenings are free to students with valid ID.

Why, you ask?

First, because it’s a terrific policy, and, second, because, if you’ve ever laid eyes on the walls of a university dorm, you know that students share a particular fondness for Bob Marley (and Tanya Chalkin’s Kiss).

As such, this afternoon’s Canadian premiere of Marley couldn’t take place at a better time or venue (3:30 p.m. at the Isabel Bader Theatre, smack in the middle of U of T’s St. George campus). We haven’t yet screened Kevin Macdonald’s authorized biography of the reggae legend, but the film made its U.S. theatrical debut on 4/20 (obviously), and has earned high praise (sorry) from critics. If there’s a slight hitch, it’s that all advance tickets to the much-anticipated screening have already been sold, but at least the rush line is as good a place as any to study for finals.

Video games are another cornerstone of campus culture, and our second recommendation is the best doc on the topic since 2007′s The King of Kong. Where that film looked at a legendary gaming rivalry, Indie Game: The Movie (), from Canadian filmmakers James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot, goes behind the scenes to profile several of the industry’s fastest-rising talents—including the creators of Xbox LIVE Arcade hits Braid, Super Meat Boy, and the recently-released Fez—and to offer compelling evidence that game development deserves to be considered a bona fide art form.

In addition to tonight’s rush-only 9 p.m. screening at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, Indie Game will be simulcast to Cineplex cinemas nationwide. Visit Cineplex’s Hot Dos Live! listings for GTA ticket availability.

Of course, gaming and Bob Marley aren’t beloved by students alone. And in keeping with the widely-accessible subject matter of the above picks, we also recommend this afternoon’s screening of Legend of a Warrior (, 1:30 p.m., The ROM Theatre), which currently tops the standings in the stakes for the Hot Docs audience award. Corey Lee’s film is a diaristic account of his own preparations to quite literally do combat with his daddy issues, as he attempts to mend his distant relationship with his martial artist father.

For our full index of festival reviews, head over to our handy Hot Docs hub.

We’ve got big love for today’s slate of Hot Docs screenings, which includes two of our favourite selections of the fest, as well as the snappily-titled Swedish doc Big Boys Gone Bananas!* (). That film, by Fredrik Gretten, screens just once (5:30 p.m., The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema), but is worth adding to your schedule, particularly if you appreciated Shadows of Liberty, one of last week’s recommendations.

Like Shadows of Liberty, a mass-media exposé, Gretten’s David-and-Goliath tale addresses the reluctance of corporate-controlled media to bite the hand that feeds. In this case, the entity doing the feeding is produce giant Dole, which launched a lawsuit in a bid to ban Bananas!*, Gretten’s 2009 doc about the exploitation of workers at Dole’s Ecuadorian plantation. Gretten’s new film looks at the legal fight surrounding its predecessor. It follows the filmmaker as he struggles to assert his freedom of expression, while U.S. media outlets prove quick to toe Dole’s line.

You’ll need to join a line of a different sort if you hope to nab rush tickets to tonight’s Canadian debut of Dreams of a Life (, 9:45 p.m., The Royal Cinema), but we certainly suggest you do.

From filmmaker Carol Morley, this docudrama is a deeply absorbing portrait of Joyce Vincent, a 38-year-old Londoner whose lonely demise in 2003 would become a tragic tabloid curiosity. Despite being remembered by friends as a vivacious aspiring singer, the fact of Vincent’s death went undiscovered for over two years, until housing authorities entered her flat and discovered her skeletal remains. Employing interviews and impressionistic reconstructions, Morley poignantly ponders how a well-liked young woman came to find herself cut so desperately adrift.

Today’s third pick also comes very highly recommended, although scoring tickets to the stunning China Heavyweight () shouldn’t pose a problem. That’s because tonight’s 9 p.m. screening at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema will also be simulcast to Cineplex cinemas across Canada, including several within the GTA. You’ll have the chance to see Yung Chang’s follow-up to 2007′s Up The Yangtze at both the Scotiabank Theatre and the Sheppard Grande as part of Hot Docs Live!—a new initiative aimed at winning wider exposure for fest selecitons. We can think of few films more deserving than this lyrically-observed boxing opus.

For our full index of festival reviews, head over to our handy Hot Docs hub.

We begin today’s mid-fest edition of our Hot Docs recommendation roundup with a selection that we’re actually yet to screen: Raymond De Felitta’s Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story. Although we can’t offer our first-hand impressions, we’re eagerly anticipating this evening’s international premiere (7:30 p.m., TIFF Bell Lightbox 2) because of the widespread praise the film has won since debuting at the recently concluded Tribeca Film Festival.

Booker’s Place explores the inflammatory legacy of a 1966 interview shot by De Felitta’s father, in which a black waiter named Booker Wright dared to voice the distress he suffered at the hands of prejudiced white patrons. Tragically, his hardships only intensified after the segment was broadcast; Wright was subjected to vicious retaliatory attacks and was eventually murdered. With Wright’s granddaughter, De Felitta revisits the Mississippi town in which the original interview was filmed to learn more about its subject’s fearless confession, and the role it played in bringing about his untimely death.

Sexy Baby (, 9 p.m., Bloor Hot Docs Cinema) is another film that arrives at Hot Docs via a successful Tribeca debut, but this time we can vouch for its quality directly. Featuring a former porn star, a young teacher prepping for labioplasty, and a teen compelled to post provocative snaps on Facebook, co-directors Ronna Gradus and Jill Bauer provide an eye-opening profile of a trio of Generation XXX-ers, young women whose social and self-perceptions have been profoundly—and perhaps problematically—shaped by omnipresent representations of sex and sexuality.

Indeed, it says much about the heavily gendered nature of those representations that Sexy Baby will be screening alongside The Final Member (), which also makes its Hot Docs bow tonight (9:45 p.m., The Royal Cinema). In this lighthearted look at the often-proud relationship between men and their penises, Canadian filmmakers Jonah Bekhor and Zack Math chronicle the attempts of Iceland’s Phallogical Museum to secure the ultimate curatorial coup: a human specimen. Eventually, two oddball candidates emerge, and The Final Member becomes a hilarious race to secure posthumous penile preservation.

For our full index of festival reviews, head over to our handy Hot Docs hub.

Bill and Turner Ross’ Tchoupitoulas () proved to be one of the hottest tickets of Hot Docs’ opening weekend, with Saturday night’s sold-out screening leaving dozens of rush-line hopefuls disappointed. Fortunately, there are still two further opportunities to catch the SXSW grand jury award-winner, beginning with this afternoon’s 4 p.m. screening at the Isabel Bader Theatre.

A follow-up to the Ross brothers’ acclaimed 45365, Tchoupitoulas is a beguiling evocation of the wonderment of boyhood that invites audiences to tag along as three adolescent siblings embark on a nocturnal odyssey through New Orleans. With an impressionistic, deeply immserive vérité style, the co-directors capture the Big Easy’s uniquely vibrant brand of revelry as seen through the teen trio’s wide eyes. And when the boys miss the last ferry home, Tchoupitoulas sees their French Quarter all-nighter become our vicarious adventure.

Our second recommendation is also a collaborative celebration of youthful imagination, though this film, from spousal tandem Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine, is more bittersweet. Entitled Inocente (, 6:30 p.m., TIFF Bell Lightbox 3), it’s the poignant, self-told story of a 15-year-old San Diegan, who is poised to realize her aspirations of becoming an artist, despite her history of homelessness and abuse, and her status as an undocumented immigrant.

Moving on to decidedly more adult-focused subject matter, our third pick is the Hot Docs world premiere selection The Mechanical Bride (, 9 p.m., Cumberland 3). Allison de Fren’s provocative doc looks at the sub-culture of the technosexual: Men who favor the companionship of synthetic females over traditional, flesh-and-blood mates. Foregoing exploitative gawking, de Fren engages in a non-judgmental exploration of the fascinating phenomenon, while pondering its wider social and philosophical ramifications.

For our full index of festival reviews, head over to our handy Hot Docs hub.

In the dock and in the doc: News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch in a still from Shadows of Liberty.

Despite its midday time slot, Friday’s world premiere of Jean-Philippe Tremblay’s Shadows of Liberty () played to a packed house at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, and eager festival-goers have already snapped up all advance tickets for today’s second and final screening (4 p.m., TIFF Bell Lightbox 3). We’d nonetheless recommend braving the rush line, as Tremblay’s scathing media takedown couldn’t be more timely.

With the Leveson Inquiry currently investigating the sorry state of UK journalism in the wake of the News Corporation hacking scandal, the Canadian filmmaker sets his sights on America’s corporate media and reveals a similarly dysfunctional institution. Tremblay marshalls a wealth of evidence to demonstrate that government deregulation has paved the way for the perversion of the media’s newsgathering function, as ever-greater numbers of journalistic outlets are consumed by powerful, profit-minded mega-conglomerates.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Shadows of Liberty doesn’t portray 81-year-old News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch in a particularly positive light. So, in the interest of offering octogenarians a fair shake, we also recommend Hugh Hartford’s superb Ping Pong (), which makes its festival debut this afternoon (4 p.m., Isabel Bader Theatre). Hartford provides an inspiring profile of eight entrants at the international over-80s table tennis championships, each vying for what may well be their last shot at glory.

In contrast, the precocious subjects of Katie Dellamaggiore’s Brooklyn Castle (, 6:30 p.m., Cumberland 3) have defied the odds to achieve remarkable success at an early age. As students at New York City middle school IS 318, they represent one of the most dominant junior high chess programs in the United States, despite their largely underprivileged upbringings. Dellamaggiore’s engaging doc attributes IS 318′s winning tradition to its excellent after-school programs, and highlights the hard-fought efforts of the school’s administrators to maintain them amid sweeping cuts to education budgets.

For our full index of festival reviews, head over to our handy Hot Docs hub.

It seems like just yesterday that Alison Klayman’s Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry () raised the curtain on Hot Docs 2012, and yet the third of the film’s three scheduled screenings is already upon us (4:15 p.m., TIFF Bell Lightbox 1). In truth, that was a whole 48 hours ago, but the fact remains: today is your last chance to catch Klayman’s much-acclaimed profile of the charismatic Chinese provocateur.

Never Sorry follows the activist-artist between 2009 and 2011, capturing his campaign to commemorate the child victims of 2008′s Sichuan earthquake, his subsequent beating at the hands of overzealous police, and his further, social media-driven efforts to expose official corruption and bureaucratic opacity. Throughout, Ai’s impish sense of humour never falters, but it becomes all too clear that Chinese authorities don’t see the funny side of his anti-establishment antics.

From a Chinese political dissident we move to a Chilean-Torontonian transplant confronting a possible diagnosis of dementia. That man is Gustavo Proto, subject of Carlo Proto’s complex paternal portrait, El Huaso ().

Despite finding financial success after moving his family from South America, happiness has eluded Carlo’s father, who has long suffered with anxiety. When he learns that he may be developing Alzheimer’s, he openly ponders the possibility of suicide, but not before returning to Chile in a bid to fulfill a childhood dream. El Huaso deftly balances respect for its subject with ruthless emotional honesty as Carlo and his family attempt to come to terms with Gustavo’s personal crisis. Its first Hot Docs screening is today (3:45 p.m., TIFF Bell Lightbox 3).

Meanwhile, the subjects of Alexa Karolinski’s touching Oma & Bella (, 6:30 p.m., TIFF Bell Lightbox 3) are nothing if not born survivors. Now in their 80s, both were concentration camp inmates during the Holocaust, and Karolinksi explores their shared, heart-wrenching recollections of that experience. But the film is also a celebration of the duo’s enduring friendship, and the pleasure they find in preparing the traditional meals that continue to link them, spiritually, to the communities they were once physically compelled to leave behind.

For our full index of festival reviews, head over to our handy Hot Docs hub.

After kicking off last night with the excellent opener Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (), Hot Docs hits its stride today with its first full slate of screenings. And to help you make the most of your vérité viewing experience, we bring you the first instalment of Hot Docs Daily—our picks of the cream of the festival’s daily crop.

While we haven’t yet had a chance to screen Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War (3 p.m., The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema), we have it on good authority that it deserves your urgent attention. We also gather that it’s guaranteed to leave you furious, though that didn’t prevent Sundance audiences from naming it the festival’s top U.S. documentary.

The title of Dick’s exposé refers to an epidemic of rape within the U.S. military, which has become so prevalent that it’s now more likely for a servicewoman to be sexually assaulted by a fellow soldier than it is for her to be killed by an enemy combatant. Dick also reveals a shameful culture of systemic cover-ups, and policies that effectively blame victims, who are without recourse to extra-military redress.

If you’re in search of a Hot Docs selection less likely to make your blood boil, we also recommend Helena Třeštíková’s Private Universe (, 6 p.m., TIFF Bell Lightbox 3), which spans a remarkable 37 years in the life of a Czech family. Like a non-fiction companion piece to Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life, it juxtaposes modest family milestones against momentous events, as Třeštíková charts Czechoslovakia’s transition from dictatorship to democracy.

Returning to the theme of abuse of power, Back to the Square (, 6:15 p.m., Isabel Bader Theatre) highlights the ongoing struggles of ordinary Egyptians in the wake of last year’s revolution. Despite President Hosni Mubarak’s departure, Peter Lom’s subjects lament that police corruption and official repression have persisted, or, in some instances, intensified.

For our full index of festival reviews, head over to our handy Hot Docs hub.