China Heavyweight: Canadian director Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze) returns to China for this look at a boxing coach and two of his teenage students. Boxing was banned in China until 1989, and it appears to still be somewhat frowned upon — in order to find willing recruits, coaches have to go to public schools in the poorest communities, where the only other career option is backbreaking farm labour. As in Up the Yangtze, Chang gets lots of lovely shots, but he doesn’t seem to know how to get people to open up to him. Too often, his subjects hold themselves in reserve, and we’re forced to guess what’s going on in their heads. The two boys, in particular, never really come into focus. But the finale, which sees the coach return to the ring after a ten year absence, is gripping, and it brings the narrative to a fitting close. ★★
Screens May 2 at 9 pm; May 3 at 2 pm; and May 4 at 9:30 pm.
Outing: In aesthetic terms, this Austrian doc from directors Sebastian Meise and Thomas Reider is blah, but the subject matter — nascent pedophilia — is so unsettling and so seldom tackled that it compels your attention. The film is about Sven (no last name given), a shy, polite, handsome man in his early twenties who — there’s no polite way to put it — has a thing for children. He’s never acted on his urges, but he lives in fear that one day he’ll succumb. At first, it’s unclear why he’d go public with this information, but eventually we get it: for him, half the battle is dealing with the shame, and if he can make the world understand him even just a little bit, some of that shame might go away. Whatever you think of the guy, it’s hard not to sympathize with him — the roots of his longings seem very deep, and he wants so badly not to be who he is. Wisely, Meise and Reider keep their feelings to themselves, letting Sven tell his story without judgment. ★★★
Screens Apr. 27 at 7 pm; and Apr. 29 at 11 am.
We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists: This is a fairly thorough look at the relatively short history of internet hacking, focussed mostly on the loosely defined “radical collective” known as Anonymous. Director Brian Knappenberger gets a surprising number of hackers to speak on camera, and most of them fit the image in your head: nerdy, awkward, but puffed up by delusions of grandeur. On one level, they’re right to crow: they’ve raised civil disobedience to new heights, and their targets — racist talk radio hosts, Scientologists — are generally pretty deserving. But all too often, the targets seem arbitrary, chosen less out of outrage and more as mere pretence for stirring shit up. Knappenberger shows how some hackers have gone beyond juvenilia — in helping to foment the recent Egyptian uprising and the “Occupy” movement, for instance — but he never quite convinces us they’re legitimate revolutionaries. ★★★
Screens May 1 at 6:15 pm; May 3 at 3 pm; and May 5 at 7 pm.
The World Before Her: Director Nisha Pahuja trains her eye on two equally sexist — and equally terrifying — areas of Indian society: Bombay beauty pageants and all-girl Hindu fundamentalist camps. Initially, the juxtapositions — ultra-liberal meat parade vs. ultra-conservative brainwashing cult — feel a little schematic, but Pahuja keeps complicating your responses. Though the camp teaches girls to be submissive, it also, paradoxically, teaches them quasi-feminist skills such as self-defence and self-reliance. And though the pageants infantilize women for the benefit of ogling men, they offer a ticket out of the slums and the chance of a prosperous life for the winners. The moral high-ground (low-ground?) keeps shifting, and by the end of the film you may just feel disgusted with everything. That’s its one arguable flaw: it posits only two equally unpleasant extremes, no middle-ground. ★★★
Screens May 2 at 7 pm; May 5 at 9:30 pm; and May 6 at 11 am.
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Hot Docs Festival runs from April 26 to May 6, 2012 | Tickets are available online.
Scott MacDonald writes about cinema for Toronto Standard.
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