Jennie Punter: Last News

Jennie Punter Danish filmmaker Christian Einshøj’s “The Mountains” has won Hot Docs’ Best International Feature Documentary Award and a Cnd. $10,000 cash prize, it was announced this morning in Toronto at the festival’s awards ceremony, held at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Produced by Made In Copenhagen, the film is an autobiographical family portrait using 30 years of home video, 75,000 photos, and a superhero road trip to explore the tragedy that led to the emotional distance between the men in the family. “The Mountains,” which premiered earlier this year at CPH:DOX, now automatically qualifies for consideration in the Academy’s Best Documentary Feature category without the standard theatrical run, provided it complies with Academy rules. Cats and Docs is handling sales.

Jennie Punter The producers of “Allihopa: The Dalkurd Story,” which follows a nail-biting stretch in the Dalkurd soccer club’s pivotal 13th season, have released a clip (below) in advance of the film’s world premiere at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival, which kicks off April 27. Dalkurd was founded in 2004 by Kurdish refugees in Sweden as an activity for Kurdish youth in a working-class town. The team immediately and swiftly rose through the country’s professional soccer ranks, its unprecedented success attracting media attention in Europe and abroad—despite notably lackluster local attendance—and making the team a symbol of victory and unity for Kurdish people around the world.

Jennie Punter Canadian documentary cinema takes center stage at Hot Docs, with films screening across programming strands, and pitch events—such as Forum and Deal Maker—connecting the global doc marketplace to the Canadian industry on its home turf.The 2021 slate includes 17 Canadian-produced features, most world premiering in the competitive Canadian Spectrum program, and seven international feature co-productions, most also world premieres.For this year’s virtual edition, Toronto’s famously doc-savvy local audience—which enjoys the big-screen doc experience year round at Hot Docs’ cinema (now via its streaming platform)—is joined by viewers from across Canada.As of Wednesday, world premiering Spectrum titles “One of Ours” (CBC),