Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival has unveiled its lineup of films for the 31st edition set to take place April 25-May 5 in Toronto. This year’s slate will present 168 documentaries representing 64 countries and will feature 51 world and 32 international premieres.
360°Sound will be covering Hot Docs as credentialed media again this year. Our focus, as always, will be on music-related documentaries. Listed below are the eight music docs that we’re most excited about. The following synopses have been culled from the Hot Docs website. Stay tuned to 360°Sound for exclusive director interviews, film reviews, and more!
Learn more about the festival on hotdocs.ca
Luther: Never Too Much
Director: Dawn Porter
Luther Vandross was always destined to be a star, but he went well beyond that, becoming one of the most venerated and beloved singer-songwriters of his generation, with hits like “Dance with My Father,” “Here and Now” and, of course, “Never Too Much.” Here, award-winning director Dawn Porter explores Vandross’s rise from background singer to icon through his relationships and collaborations with legendary recording artists such as David Bowie, Mariah Carey and Dionne Warwick.
Beyond his battles with the music industry and his desire to escape being pigeon-holed as an R&B artist, emerges a portrait of a spiritual man with a voice from the heavens whose ambition and work ethic simmer around a heart wracked by personal battles with weight and the pursuit of love. Letting the music guide the way, Luther: Never Too Much is a well-overdue ode to a trailblazer whose music will live in popular culture forever.
Disco’s Revenge
Directors: Omar Majeed and Peter Mishara
Born underground on the heels of the civil rights movement and the Stonewall uprising, disco emerged as an exuberant musical genre, radical social movement and vibrant counterculture—before it was co-opted, exploited and violently stamped out. In our collective pop-culture imagination disco has become a fad relegated to soft-focus memories of Saturday Night Fever and Studio 54. But it’s time to set the record straight: Disco. Never. Died.
Disco’s Revenge is a pulsating, experiential deep dive into the very soul of disco music and its enduring impact across genres and history, told by the people who created it, nurtured it, and in turn, discovered themselves on the dance floor. It isn’t just about why disco matters—but why, in these divisive times, disco matters more than ever. Featuring interviews and performances by Nile Rodgers and Chic, Billy Porter, Nona Hendryx and LaBelle, Grandmaster Flash, Fab Five Freddy, Nicky Siano, Jellybean Benitez, and many others.
Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story
Directors: Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee
Once you’ve heard Jackie Shane sing, you’ll never forget it. Yet, after shattering barriers as one of pop music’s first Black trans performers, this trail-blazing icon vanished from the spotlight at the height of her fame. From modest beginnings in Nashville, Shane soon recognized her talents and, in her late teens, made her way to Boston and Montreal, working the nightclub circuit while taking the stage with Frank Motley, a musician known for playing two trumpets at once.
Shane’s arrival in Toronto during its 1960s music explosion made her a highly sought-after headlining act who seemed destined to take her place among the R&B stars of the era. Blending her music with never-released phone conversations and soulful animated re-enactments, Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story brings Shane back to life in her own words, finally providing the recognition she so rightly deserves and introducing her to a generation fighting for their right to be their true selves.
Michel Gondry, Do It Yourself
Director: François Nemeta
Director Michel Gondry re-invented the music video and challenged Hollywood with his playfully distinctive hand-made visual style. Intimately documented by his friend and long-time assistant, François Nemeta, in Michel Gondry, Do It Yourself, Gondry’s career receives overdue review, from his earliest clips for his own band Oui Oui, to his best-known music videos for Björk, Daft Punk, the Foo Fighters, the White Stripes and the Chemical Brothers, to the invention of the “bullet time” effect made famous by The Matrix, to the bespoke shorts he now makes for just one spectator: his daughter Maya.
Inspired by the French magician and film pioneer Georges Méliès and his inventor grandfather, Gondry has created three decades of fascinating and poetic work. Here, his unusual creative process is on full display as he shares his ethos of “creating without caring what others think, learning while doing and taking pleasure while doing it.” Featuring Kylie Minogue, Beck, Jack White, Spike Jonze, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Jack Black.
Beethoven’s Nine: Ode to Humanity
Director: Larry Weinstein
Can a work of art remain relevant 200 years after its creation? Ludwig van Beethoven’s last completed symphony proves it’s possible. The opus remains one of the most recognizable pieces of classical music still performed worldwide; significantly, Leonard Bernstein conducted it to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall in one of his last public concerts. Perhaps the most poignant and meaningful recent performance of the work was by the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra in a powerfully defiant response to the Russian invasion.
Why is this work, with its “Ode to Joy,” still such an evocative and exuberant expression of hope and resilience, love and freedom? Psychologist Steven Pinker traces the links between Beethoven’s masterpiece and the Enlightenment, while Charles Schultz’s Peanuts comics show how it infiltrated popular culture. Spanning a range of subjects, each with their own special connection to this work written as a love letter to all humankind, director Larry Weinstein finds himself drawn in, as recent personal and world events collide, shining a light on how impossible it is to separate art from life.
Teaches of Peaches
Directors: Philipp Fussenegger and Judy Landkammer
Filmed during the Teaches of Peaches Anniversary Tour in 2022, Teaches of Peaches seamlessly weaves together exclusive archival gems with dynamic tour footage capturing the transformative journey of Toronto’s own Merrill Nisker to become the internationally acclaimed cultural powerhouse that is Peaches. From the inception of the stage show to the rigorous rehearsals and riveting performances, this intimate look shows an icon in her prime.
Nisker takes this anniversary as an opportunity to reflect on her past—from her musical beginnings creating songs for kids in daycare to her favorite stage costumes—all set to her fearless, sexually charged electro earworms. Through biting wit and brash talent, she advocates for body autonomy and LGBTQIA+ rights, leaving an indelible mark on popular culture. The feminism and art of Peaches will forever challenge gender stereotypes, social norms and the patriarchy until the world can finally “take it on, take it all on.”
Me, Michael and I
Directors: Nicolas-Alexandre Tremblay and Régis Coussot
Michael Jackson inspired his share of impersonators, but few can hold a candle to Freddy Dufour, a.k.a. the Truthwalker, a 25-year-old from Quebec who is dedicating his life and body to emulate his hero. Undergoing numerous surgical procedures, from dental reconstruction to nose jobs, Dufour feels it’s just part of his duty to embody the pop star’s physique fully as he attempts to get investors to stage a Las Vegas–level tribute show, complete with backup dancers. One of those dancers is his incredibly supportive girlfriend Danny, who, along with Dufour’s parents, has supported him for years.
Obsession can drive us to great things, but it can also blur our dreams and reality and the limits to which we’ll pursue our ambitions. Me, Michael & I follows Dufour’s journey without judgment, allowing us to witness how far we can take our pursuit of perfection and the perils of a culture that valorizes its idols at any cost.
Eno
Director: Gary Hustwit
Visionary musician and artist Brian Eno has produced singer David Bowie and bands like Talking Heads, Roxy Music and U2 over his 50-year career. Here, we take a trip into the mercurial essence of Eno’s specific brand of creativity in a way that has never been done before in the documentary form. Eno is a generative film: it plays slightly differently at each screening, thanks to a bespoke algorithm that lets the film become a kind of evergreen performance.
Acclaimed director Gary Hustwit reveals new, previously unreleased music and artworks from Eno’s archive to track a creative evolution from art student to pioneer of ambient music. Eno is principled, engaged and playful as he guides us through a life that uses art as its guiding principle.
