An eye-opening documentary by a Guelph strip club manager-turned filmmaker about his family’s damaged lives after decades in the peeler business will open the 20th edition of Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival, on April 25.

Shawney Cohen’s The Manor, a story of “sex, drugs and family feuds,” kicks off the fest — the first time a debut feature by a Canadian filmmaker has opened Hot Docs in a decade. The ever-expanding festival will screen a record 205 documentaries from 43 countries in 11 screening programs from April 25 to May 5 at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema and other venues.

Cohen said his first feature-length film is more a story of his family’s struggles and shocking transformations over 30 years since buying The Manor and its adjacent motel than what goes on in the club.

Hot Docs has also announced a new program to showcase filmmakers and their subjects in conversation onstage after screenings. Among those featured in the Scotiabank Big Ideas series is law professor Anita Hill, appearing with Anita director Freida Mock and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, both outspoken authors and subjects of The Unbelievers.

Among the other films announced for the Hot Docs roster are Malcolm Ingram’s Continental, about the storied New York City gay bathhouse; Lucy Walker’s thrilling Sundance hit The Crash Reel, about snowboarder Kevin Pearce; Penny Lane’s presidential exploration Our Nixon; and Raoul Peck’s Fatal Assistance, about the ways in which billions of dollars donated to Haiti were lost or stolen due to corruption and mismanagement.

Homegrown movies competing in the Canadian Spectrum program include Michelle Latimer’s Alias, a look at five Toronto street rappers, and Charles Wilkinson’s Oil Sands Karaoke, about how amateur songbirds working in boomtown Fort McMurray, Alta., blow off steam and ease loneliness.





There are films about urban dirt-bike gangs (Lotfy Nathan’s 12 O’Clock Boys), Lapland reindeer herders (Jessica Oreck’s Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys), Elvis Presley’s eating habits (James Marsh’s The Burger and the King) and an unapologetic 81-year-old jewel thief (Matthew Pond and Kirk Marcolina’s The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne).

More than 2,000 industry delegates will be shopping for unsold films at Hot Docs, along with attending industry events, conferences, forums and, of course, parties.

For a list of films and to purchase tickets and passes, go to hotdocs.ca.

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