culture
Hot Docs Daily: The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear, A Dream in the Making, Mistaken for Strangers
As Hot Docs 2013 shifts into weekend mode, there are plenty of films worth seeing.
Rock and roll gets brotherly in Mistaken for Strangers. Image courtesy of Hot Docs.
On the eighth day of Hot Docs, the film gods gave to thee…three docs that got our reviewers’ thumbs up.
Straight from Sundance, The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear (
, 6 p.m., Scotiabank Theatre) looks at the lives of young Georgians (that’s Georgia the country, not the state) in an innovative way. Director Tinatin Gurchiani put out a casting call for citizens between the ages of 15 and 25 who felt their lives merited being in a doc. Mixing interviews with reenactments, the result is a compelling look at life in one corner of Eastern Europe.
A Dream in the Making (
, 9:45 p.m., TIFF Bell Lightbox) is set in one of the most impoverished neighbourhoods in Warsaw, Poland. The film’s young protagonist idolizes Bruce Lee and dreams of becoming a stunt man. Though the story is slight, Bartosz M. Kowalski shoots beautifully and refuses easy allegories and generalizations of Polish youth.
Last but not least, the Nightvision program continues to impress with Mistaken for Strangers (, 11:59 p.m., Bloor Hot Docs Cinema). A new take on the “rockumentary,” here the creative differences fall along family lines, as the frontman for The National invites his younger brother to tour with the band as a roadie.