Over 140 documentary films will be showcased as part of 2020 Hot Docs Festival Online, which starts May 28. Among the documentaries featured at the festival include Finding Sally, directed by Tamara Mariam Dawit; and the World Premiere of First We Eat directed by Suzanne Crocker; and Meat the Future directed by Liz Marshall.
FINDING SALLY – Directed by Tamara Mariam Dawit
North American Premiere
Canada/Ethiopia/United States
Distributor: Cinema Politica
Finding Sally tells the incredible story of a 23-year-old woman from an upper class family who became a communist rebel with the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party. Her romances and ideals entangled her in the country’s revolutionary fever and landed her on the military government’s most wanted list. She went underground and her family never saw her again. Four decades after Sally’s disappearance, Tamara Dawit pieces together the mysterious life of her Aunt Sally and revisits the Ethiopian revolution and the terrible massacre that followed, during which half a million people died. Her quest leads her to question notions of family, identity, belonging, personal convictions, idealism and political engagement, in a time when Ethiopia may be on the brink of another revolution.
FIRST WE EAT – Directed by Suzanne Crocker
World Premiere
Canada
Distributor: Blue Ice Docs
First We Eat sees Suzanne Crocker, an award-winning filmmaker and retired family doctor, who sets out to feed her family only food that can be grown, raised, gathered, hunted, trapped and fished in and around her community of Dawson City, Yukon, for one full year. She started in mid-summer 2017 researching the wealth of local food options available as well as the challenges and the possibilities for increasing local food security across the Canadian North.
MEAT THE FUTURE – Directed by Liz Marshall
World Premiere
Canada
Chronicling the birth of an industry, Meat the Future is a close-up and personal look at the visionaries who are risking everything to innovate and produce real meat without slaughtering animals and without environmental destruction. It could also prevent zoonotic foodborne disease and the next health pandemic. The prospect of meat consumption doubling by 2050 is not only sobering, it is a wake-up call for solutions. Compared to conventionally-produced beef, cell-based beef is estimated, at scale, to reduce land use by more than 95%, climate change emissions by 74% to 87%, and nutrient pollution by 94%. Filmed exclusively between 2016 and 2019, Meat the Future follows the genesis phase of the clean meat movement in America, behind the scenes with its pioneers – they are activists, scientists, researchers, marketers and policy experts, all focused on the goal of an ethical, sustainable and profitable food future.