Hot Docs 2010: Focus Features’ Babies Opens Fest, Best from Sundance Fills Slate

I doubt Thomas Balmes’ documentary Babies will address questions of environmental impacts of the world’s most pressing pandemic (overpopulation) or the carbon footprint between a San Francisco born toddler or a third world country newborn, but what I do expect is a minor surge of pregnancies in the month of January, nine months to the date after the film’s theatrical release. I think the ball might get started in April – as the documentary film that features 4 newborns in 4 corners of the globe will be the opening film for the 2010 edition of the Hot Doc Film Festival.

Hot Docs is well-positioned between Sundance and Silverdocs, this year’s edition features tons of Sundance items such as Gasland, Bhutto, Joan Rivers – A Piece Of Work, My Perestroika, 12th & Delaware and hopefully an edited down version of Casino Jack and the United States of Money. Also making their international premieres we have Slamdance’s And Everything Is Going Fine, SXSW’s The People vs. George Lucas and a pre-Tribeca showing of Feathered Cocaine. If I do venture to Toronto to cover the fest, tops in my books is Nicolas Philibert’s Nénette – a Berlin Film Festival offering that questions the purpose of animal zoos, specifically citing the nightmarish life of several orangutans.