What to watch and how to watch it at Hot Docs 2023

If truth is indeed stranger than fiction, then this year’s edition of the Hot Docs film festival is too good to be true: a 200-plus-film bonanza exploring every corner of our forever unknowable world.

The fest runs from Thurs., April 27, to Sun., May 7, in-person across venues in Toronto and available to anyone in Canada online.

How to watch and stream Hot Docs 2023

Viewers can browse the full list of films sorted alphabetically, organized by cinema scheduling time, or by downloading a PDF of the schedule.

Films will be screened across five venues in Toronto:

Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema (506 Bloor Street West)
Isabel Bader Theatre (93 Charles Street West)
Ontario Place (955 Lakeshore Boulevard West, West Commons)
Tiff Bell Lightbox (350 King Street West)
Scotiabank Theatre Toronto (259 Richmond Street West)

Tickets for screenings can be purchased in advance online through the Hot Docs website. Rush tickets will be available for films when there are no advance tickets remaining.

Canadians who can’t make it to screenings can stream select festival films from May 5 to May 9. Streaming access can be purchased through the Hot Docs website. Viewers have 48 hours to finish watching a movie (or watch it more than once) from the time they begin to stream it. You must be in Canada to stream. Online films, like in-person screenings, have a limited number of tickets available, so they can sell out.

Who runs the Hot Docs festival?

The fest, founded in 1994, is run by the Hot Docs not-for-profit organization. Its mandate is to “showcase and support the work of Canadian and international documentary filmmakers and to promote excellence in documentary production.”

Must-watch films at Hot Docs 2023

Praying for Armageddon

If it seems that the world is constantly nearing midnight on the doomsday clock, then you’ll find cold comfort with Tonje Hessen Schei’s new doc. The film offers a hard and chilling look at the Evangelical movement in the United States, and how the group’s views on everything from the economy to foreign policy is influenced by a desire to hasten the end of the world.

The Man Who Stole Einstein’s Brain

Using his head for all the wrong reasons, Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey pulled off one very big, very strange stunt in 1955 after performing Albert Einstein’s autopsy: he spirited away the genius’s grey matter. In this wild chronicle of fact versus fiction, science versus celebrity, Canadian journalist and director Michelle Shephard sorts out the tale of the world’s most beloved brain.

Coven

Prolific Canadian documentarian Rama Rau boils up some trouble with her latest film, an examination of contemporary witchcraft that aims to destigmatize the practice. Following three young millennial witches, Rau travels across the globe to discover what we’ve all been getting wrong about Wicca.

Satan Wants You

Speaking of the supernatural, co-directors Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor look back on the biggest trick that the Devil never pulled. That being the era known as “Satanic Panic,” in which the Catholic Church, in concert with medical charlatans and an overeager media, convinced a large swath of the United States that Satan was real, and plotting all kinds of mischief in daycares, schools and communities.

July Talk: Love Lives Here

How does the show go on when no one is legally allowed to gather for a show? This was the conundrum faced by Canadian rock band July Talk during the lowest days of the pandemic. The group’s solution – a new kind of drive-in concert, held in August 2020 – is captured here by director Brittany Farhat, with the promise of just the kind of electric energy that July Talk is known for.

What awards does Hot Docs give out?

Hot Docs 2023 will dole out more than $140,000 in cash and prizes to filmmakers. There are juried awards for films in competition and audience awards voted on by film watchers. All award winners will be announced on Sat., May 6.

The main award categories are: