It was a little more than smart programming for Hot Docs to schedule a Werner Herzog retrospective at this year’s festival. The veteran filmmaker is arguably bigger than he’s ever been, with his last significant work, Grizzly Man (2005,) being among the most successful and accessible films of his career, making Hot Docs’ timing beyond excellent. With the retrospective came the man himself, on hand for a few pre-screening intros and a sold-out lecture/public interview. It was hard not to think that Herzog stole a little thunder away from the rest of filmmakers. But the adoration Herzog recieves from his fans is warranted, and the man’s work speaks for itself -- the real treat of the festival was getting to see some of his rarer works on the big screen and to be able to watch them with devoted fans.

What would you do if given the choice to live freely in 1950s Communist China, or to return to your home in United States and face possible persecution for crimes that you didn’t commit? It’s certainly not an easy question, especially when your life hangs in the balance of your decision. But for twenty-one American POWs captured during the Korean War, the decision was clear, and they chose China over the McCarthy-plagued United States. Shui-Bo Wang’s compassionate documentary tells the story of these soldiers from their time as POWs to present day, as he tracks down the remaining survivors in China and the United States. Like any historical doc, there’s a strong reliance on archival footage. Wang does a tremendous job of finding relevant material and using it to tell the story, rather than relying on a voice over to move the story forward. The director also excels in making interesting characters out of people who have gone on to lead relatively ordinary lives. He never strays from the fact that a single decision in 1954 dramatically changed each of the soldiers’ lives. They Chose China tells a truly fascinating story and one that we’re fortunate to have been told in such an engaging way.

Who is Ralph Nader? If you were like me, you thought of him as that slightly wacky but naïve U.S. presidential candidate who meant well but stole votes from the Democratic Party and ultimately helped pave the way for two terms of George W. Bush. Of course, no recent American election is that easy to explain, and Ralph Nader’s political ambitions have been largely misunderstood. This film aims to reintroduce Nader to the public and impress upon us that he has always been a tireless crusader for democracy and public safety. From Nader’s early days going up against General Motors, to the young "Nader's Raiders” who fought unregulated corporations, the scope and importance of Nader’s work make him a fascinating historical subject. There is, of course, some pro Nader bias in parts of the film (swelling music is cued to give the needed oomph to some of his speeches), but An Unreasonable Man thankfully never submits to full-out Michael Moore-style leftist propaganda. Instead the film maintains a general detachment with plenty of historical context and follows the democratic advice Nader gave to filmmakers Mantel and Skrovan to make sure they talked to his critics, by offering a respectable amount of time to those who consider Nader more of a trouble maker than a patriot. Although we can thank Nader for seat belts and airbags, his obsession to make a “sick” democracy healthy again has alienated some of his biggest supporters. 

Given the huge growth in documentary popularity, Hot Docs programmers thought All-Stars was a natural choice to open the ten day event, as the film represents what audiences have begun to embrace in the new alternative cinema. The movie had sex (it’s about a group of prostitutes, after all), global social commentary (very poor Guatemalan prostitutes), and opposition against tyranny and injustice (the prostitutes form a soccer team called the Railway All-Stars to raise awareness of their fight against violence and police corruption). While enjoyable and sometimes heart wrenching, the film never quite achieves being more than a winning pitch to broadcasters. The camera work is shaky and unprofessional at times, and the editing suffers in trying to make coherent story lines out of many divergent subjects. The prostitutes themselves are an interesting group of women who apologise for little and talk with frankness about their broken pasts, brutal lives and bleak futures. These revelations, however, are interspersed all too rarely in a road movie structure that sees the All-Stars and their supporters playing across South America and using the subsequent media attention to spread their message. They play soccer badly, by the way, and the opposing teams are only slightly better, and at the end of the film the women must abandon the sport to go back to their work. Even if the film pulls its punches for the sake of audience appeal, director Rodríguez got to know his subjects well as people and friends and consequently never denies them complexity and joy for the sake of the greater social message.

Directed with confidence by the British brothers Nick and Marc Curtis, the visual polish of Black Gold is largely thanks to the use of well framed anchored shots that counterpoint the handheld footage. Stunning visuals introduce a surprisingly lush and green Ethiopia and the small communities of farmers who have grown the world’s best coffee for generations. Despite the consistently booming worldwide popularity of coffee, many farmers cannot make enough money to feed their families, and though the film focuses on Africa, it also encompasses the greater global coffee industry. From markets in London, UK, to barista competitions in the US, the film successfully touches on many aspects of modern coffee culture. Captions with bleak statistics about poverty, greed, and Western trade practices are written across the screen at perfectly timed intervals to heighten the disparity between coffee farmers living in life-threatening poverty and wealthy first world coffee distributors and consumers. The captions manage to be both highly effective and seamlessly contextual. While lesser filmmakers may have focused all the blame on giant evil multinational distributors like Starbucks, the Curtis brothers refuse the easy out – it’s not a simple, finger pointing argument, after all. Appropriately, Black Gold shifts focus to each link in the coffee chain, offering alternatives (most notably fair trade coffee) without preaching or losing audience attention.

The filmmakers have also set up a website for the film www.blackgoldmovie.com that they hope will also become a centre of discussion on global coffee trade practices.