9 can't-miss documentaries to see in theatres at Hot Docs 2023

These recommendations are part of CBC Arts' coverage of the 2023 Hot Docs Festival.

The great thing about Hot Docs — North America's largest documentary film festival — is that there are almost no bad documentaries here. If you are a documentary person, then Hot Docs is pretty much a "bangers only" kind of affair.

The hardest part of the festival is picking out which movies — which absolute-best-of-the-best docs — you want to see. And it can be hard. Choice paralysis is a real thing.

So to help you head that off at the pass, here are nine suggestions for this year's fest.

Aitamaako'tamisskapi Natosi: Before The Sun

Indian Relay is probably one of the most dangerous sports in the world. Based in the equestrian traditions of the Indigenous peoples of the Prairies, the sport features one rider riding bareback around a track, changing horses each lap. Ideally, the rider will jump off one horse while it's still moving, hit the ground for a couple of steps, and then leap up onto the next horse. As you can imagine, there are any number of places where things can go very wrong. 

Aitamaako'tamisskapi Natosi: Before The Sun follows Logan Red Crow from Siksika First Nation as she gets ready to compete at the Calgary Stampede, one of a tiny number of women in an overwhelmingly male sport. The film looks at the relationships between parents and children, between brothers and sisters, and between humans and animals. It's also a peek behind the scenes of one of the wildest competitions you'll ever see. - Chris Dart, web writer

The American Gladiators Documentary

It's a Saturday morning in the early 1990s. You are 12 years old. You've outgrown Saturday morning cartoons but are still too young to actually do anything cool or interesting. And there's only one thing on your mind: American Gladiators. 

That is absolutely a snapshot from my childhood, but it's also a pretty common experience. The show American Gladiators was like if the NFL and The Price is Right had a baby and then gave it to the WWE to raise. It pitted absolutely inhumanly jacked athletes and bodybuilders against somewhat-fitter-than-average regular people in a series of weird, made-up combat sports and obstacle courses. Usually, the Average Joes and Janes would get crushed. Occasionally, David would beat Goliath and the crowd would go wild. For a time, it was the most popular syndicated show in North America. 

Unfortunately, whenever there're unusually muscular people on television, there's almost always an unpleasant underside to it, and it seems like the Gladiators were no exception. I am going into this absolutely ready to both experience some deep nostalgia and have something I loved as a child be tarnished forever. (Also, I respect the "does what it says on the tin" title a ton.) - Chris Dart, web writer

I'm Just Here for the Riot

Vancouver's 2011 Stanley Cup riot wasn't the first sports riot. It wasn't even Vancouver's first Stanley Cup-related riot. Sports-related rioting has a long and storied history; unfortunately there is just a certain segment of fans who are always going to want to overturn a car because their favourite team lost, or, in other cases, won. But what made the 2011 riots unique was that they were the first sports riots of the smartphone era. The riots were captured live, as they happened, and in some cases by the rioters themselves. The footage helped fuel the mob mentality that took hold both during the riot, and after, as people sought to punish those responsible. 

I'm Just Here for the Riot is part of ESPN's award-winning 30 for 30 series, which makes sports documentaries that even people who don't care about sports at all will love, and it's directed by accomplished documentarians Asia Youngman and Kat Jayme. (Jayme is the mind behind last year's great Vancouver sports doc, The Grizzlie Truth.) This one is a can't-miss. - Chris Dart, web writer

It's Only Life After All

One thing many people are going to learn at this year's Hot Docs: the Indigo Girls deserve way more than we as a society have given them. I'll admit I was only casually aware of their music and contribution to LGBTQ visibility before seeing it, but Alexandria Bombach's documentary It's Only Life After All very much changed that.

Blending archival video and present-day interviews with years of camcorder and audiotape footage taken by the Girls themselves, the film paints a deservedly adoring portrait of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, the two women who came together in the 1980s to form a folk-rock duo that quite literally saved the lives of so many queer folks. A must-see no matter your relationship to the Indigo Girls. - Peter Knegt, producer

The Lebanese Burger Mafia

In 2021, Omar Mouallem released The Last Baron, a short doc about Burger Baron, the fast-food chain that could have been Canada's answer to McDonald's. Founded in the '50s, the brand had more than 50 locations around the country at its height — but today, you'll only find it in Alberta. (OK, OK, it's in B.C. too, but there's only one location.) 

Burger Baron's a franchise that isn't exactly a franchise. No two menus are the same — save for maybe the signature mushroom sauce — and the chain has achieved a sort of cult status in the west. But the legend of Burger Baron involves more than food and wonky corporate branding. It's a story about making a life in Canada — a story about the Lebanese diaspora in Alberta. 

As Mouallem revealed in his 2021 short doc, many of the chain's owners landed in the province after fleeing the Lebanese civil war (1975 –1990), and over the years, the restaurants have been passed down to other newcomers arriving in Alberta. Mouallem himself is former fast-food royalty; his dad, a Lebanese immigrant, was the "Burger Baron" of High Prairie. The Lebanese Burger Mafia promises to be a super-sized version of the story Mouallem began telling with The Last Baron. Pass the deep-fried mushrooms; I can't wait to see it. - Leah Collins, senior writer

Satan Wants You

If Season 4 of Stranger Things is the only thing you know about the Satanic Panic, Satan Wants You will be a wicked lesson in '80s history. But the same could be said if you lived through the fear and paranoia of the actual era. How the hell did it happen? 

In Satan Wants You, filmmakers Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor reveal the strange origins of the Satanic Panic. And it's a story that begins here in Canada — in Victoria, actually, which is Horlor's hometown. In 1980, a Victoria psychiatrist, Dr. Larry Pazder, released a best-selling book called Michelle Remembers. Co-authored by his patient Michelle Smith, the memoir was billed as "the shocking true story of the ultimate evil — a child's possession by the Devil!" That child was Smith, who claimed to have been kidnapped and tortured by a Satanic cult at the age of five, and in the book, Smith details horror after horror — stories of mass murder and mutilation that are presented as her "recovered memories" from therapy. The success of Michelle Remembers made Pazder and Smith world experts on the brand new subject of 'Satanic ritual abuse,' and their expertise was sought by members of the psychiatric community and law enforcement. 

Archival documents further reveal how Michelle Remembers was used to fuel misinformation, and Satan Wants You retraces all that history with the help of key players who've remained silent for years. Her younger sister appears in the film, along with Pazder's daughter and ex-wife. All three are still grappling with the aftermath of Michelle Remembers and the devastation it wrought on countless lives. The doc also features an original recording from one of Smith's therapy sessions. Recorded in 1976, the audio has never been heard by the public before — and what appears on that tape only deepens the mystery of Michelle Remembers and what motivated the duo to write it. - Leah Collins, senior writer

The Stroll

The history of New York City's Meatpacking District is told through the voices of the transgender women of colour who lived it in Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker's illuminating and powerful documentary The Stroll, which is having its Canadian premiere at Hot Docs after winning a major award at Sundance.

The film takes us through the era before the Meatpacking District experienced massive gentrification, when trans women of colour lived, worked, loved and died on its streets. What culminates is a film that feels like an essential new entry in the burgeoning — and alarmingly necessary — canon of trans cinema. - Peter Knegt, producer

Who's Afraid of Nathan Law?

I gasped every 15 minutes while watching Who's Afraid of Nathan Law? The film follows the titular Nathan, one of the leaders of the 2014 Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong. We watch Law go from awkward teen to the youngest lawmaker in Hong Kong to public enemy number one. Law's horrifying descriptions of how the Chinese government went after him, his friends and his family are astonishingly scary.

Director Joe Piscatella has intimate knowledge of the people involved in the Umbrella Revolution (he made another film about Law's fellow revolutionary Joshua Wong). He's able to break down the ins and outs of Hong Kong's democracy movement so that you don't have to be an expert in Chinese politics to follow the story.

Who's Afraid of Nathan Law? is the epitome of a great political documentary: you learn a lot without feeling like you're in a classroom. - Sabina Wex, contributor

You Were My First Boyfriend

I love PEN15 — the show in which actors/show creators Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle play mildly fictionalized versions of their adolescent selves. So I was excited to watch Cecilia Aldarondo recreate her most traumatic high school experiences in You Were My First Boyfriend. Like PEN15, I thought I'd get comedy, but instead I got a comedy-tragedy hybrid. 

Aldarondo and her co-director, Sarah Enid Hagey, created a film that made me feel embarrassed at first and ended with me crying by the end. At first, I hated Aldarondo's desire to recreate scenes of jocks rejecting her or mean girls making fun of her. I was like, "You're in your 40s! Stop obsessing over high school!" 

But as the movie goes on, I started to see that Aldarondo wasn't living in the past — she was trying to understand when she stopped feeling happy. High school is that moment for her, and for many of us. Aldarondo and Hagey bring this to us through a humourous lens with some very real moments. - Sabina Wex, contributor