Here are some of Hot Docs best offerings — whether you’re in Toronto or not

Despite a series of depressing headlines last year and a significantly scaled-back lineup in 2025, Toronto’s Hot Docs is back for another year.

The documentary festival, often described as North America’s biggest, has mostly been in the news over the past year for its budget struggles, employee exodus and subsequent existential crises. Still, the festival (which runs from April 24 to May 4) boasts a slate of 113 documentaries for 2025, covering everything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the Russia-Ukranian war to the often ridiculous realities of being raised in the circus (that is, in the adorable and contemplative Circusboy). 

To help you navigate the festival, we’ve put together a list of some of the best films on offer — as well as when and how those outside of Toronto can watch them.

How do you face evil when no one seems to be doing anything to stop it? And how many rules will you break to ensure those responsible are stopped?

Those are the questions that Windor, Ont., man Jason Nassr seemingly asked himself when setting up Creeper Hunter TV, one of many North American organizations promoting themselves as grassroots bait groups chasing online child predators. While it might sound like the intro to a superhero movie, documentarian Matt Gallagher attempts to show how these groups can sometimes lead to wanton cruelty, widespread harm and even criminality.

As Shamed documents, Nassr eventually found himself and his organization connected to a complicated court case, and more than one suicide. Speaking to relatives, law enforcement and Nassr himself, Gallagher pulls no punches in examining the apparent motivations behind online vigilantism, and the possibly tragic fallout of taking the law into your own hands.

As of Thursday morning, there were tickets available for its April 28 and May 2 showings.

If you’re outside Toronto: Shamed is scheduled to air online and broadcast on TVO in the fall.

There is something beautifully strange about Ryan Sidhoo’s The Track. The meditative sports documentary is ostensibly about a neglected Sarajevo bobsled, skeleton and luge track that was one of the fewer than 20 working complexes in the world. Now, it is a crumbling, bullet-marked testament to the Bosnian war, and Sidhoo documents former luge Olympian Senad Omanovic’s determined effort to keep it — and the sport he loves — from disappearing forever.

But as Sidhoo follows Omanovic and the group of Olympic hopefuls training under him, The Track becomes something more. The beautifully shot, majestically scored and professionally paced doc is as much an examination of the indomitable nature of hope as it is the wonderfully odd sport at its core. 

Tickets for its April 27 and April 30 showings were available as of Thursday morning.

If you’re outside Toronto: The Track is set for a wide release this fall, shortly ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The Associated Press war correspondent Mstyslav Chernov put his life at risk while making 20 Days in Mariupol, the Oscar-winning documentary focusing on the first days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

2000 Meters to Andriivka is, incredibly, more of the same. Embedded with a group of Ukranian soldiers at the frontline, Chernov’s newest documentary showcases the absurd human cost that must be paid simply to move two kilometres toward a small Ukrainian village. Firefights break out, military vehicles are bombed, and many die on both sides as Chernov’s camera rolls. The result is a harrowing documentary, that’s as vital as it is hard to watch.

Tickets were available for both April 27 and April 29 showings as of Thursday morning.

If you’re outside Toronto: While 2000 Meters to Andriivka is a joint release by PBS Frontline and The Associated Press, producers say they plan to show it theatrically later this year.

Depending on her age, you may know her from Children of a Lesser God, playing a deaf school janitor caught up in a love affair with a hearing coworker. Or Oscar best picture-winner CODA, about — as the title suggests — Children of Deaf Adults. Or that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry had her read the lips of a couple breaking up at another table.

But wherever you’ve seen her, actor Marlee Matlin’s work has probably made its mark on you. In Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, she details what it took for her to make it. That involves the difficult relationship with her parents, what she explains was an abusive relationship with actor William Hurt, and the long road to see another deaf actor (her CODA co-star Troy Kotsur) follow in her footsteps to win an Oscar.

Tickets were available for all three showings on April 27, April 30 and May 4.

If you’re outside Toronto: Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore will have a theatrical run starting June 20. 

Haida Gwaii’s Skidegate Saints are the team to beat in the All Native Basketball Tournament. And if you listen to their players — old hands nearing their 40s who are now barely hanging on to their dominant run of championship wins — basketball is more than a sport to them. It’s a way of life.

Saints and Warriors does quite a lot more than just show the road to a title. Weaving together Canada’s colonial history with personal stories of Indigenous resilience, director Patrick Shannon both documents a community and the complicated connection its residents have to it. It’s one of a number of incredible Indigenous-made documentaries at the festival — including the social media exposé #skoden, and the almost unbelievably gorgeous masculinity study Siksikakowan: The Blackfoot Man — that are all more than worth your time.

Tickets for Saints and Warriors were still available for April 28 and April 30 showings as of Thursday morning.

If you’re outside Toronto: Saints and Warriors will appear at Vancouver’s DOXA film festival in May before its theatrical release on Sept. 30, coinciding with the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. After a theatrical run, it will stream on Crave.

Already a Sundance Film Festival award winner, Mr. Nobody Against Putin focuses on what may be the dominant theme of this year’s festival. Pavel (Pasha) Talankin is a videographer at a Russian elementary school, tasked with recording what are — at first — cute, if unremarkable, goings on among the students. That quickly shifts after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when he is tasked with documenting increasingly disquieting events: Record new lessons about Europe’s inferiority to Russia. Record students reading from pre-written scripts about their understanding of the ongoing invasion. Record a grenade-throwing competition between teenagers.

In Mr. Nobody, Talankin documents the slow slide toward authoritarianism on display at the school, and his eventual decision to flee Russia to show his footage to the world. The result of this plan is the documentary itself, which is a harrowing account of a man at odds with his country and his family.

Tickets were available for April 27 showing as of Thursday morning. The April 26 showing is down to rush access.

If you’re outside Toronto: Mr. Nobody Against Putin is showing at DOXA in May.

Christo Grozev was the man primarily behind Bellingcat, the Netherlands-based investigative journalism group that, among other things, researched and identified an assasination team working for Russian President Vladimir Putin. In Antidote, Grozev has the script flipped on him. After ostensibly upsetting members of the Russian government with his articles, there may or may not be a team of hitmen tracking Grozev and his family. This all plays out while Grozev is attempting to aid a defecting member of Russia’s chemical weapons program, and working to free a prominent Russian activist on trial for treason. 

In telling these interwoven stories, Antidote is nothing if not high stakes. It’s also an incredibly important, and timely, portrait of investigative journalism and the dangers of modern-day activism.

Tickets were available for Antidote‘s April 28 showing as of Thursday morning. Its April 26 showing is down to rush access.

If you’re outside Toronto: Antidote is due to for an American release on PBS Frontline on May 6, available on their website and Apple TV+. Availability times can differ slightly for Canadian audiences.