Spotlight Programs at DOXA

Beyond the festival’s cornerstone Justice Forum and Rated Y programs, DOXA 2024 will include four Spotlight programming streams: Paint Me a Film, True Lies, The Devil Stole Our Laughter, and Children of the Sun. In the assemblage of docs in Paint Me a Film, the documentary camera turns inward; looping from director to lens like a cinematic carousel, the films in this Spotlight contend with the camera’s role against a backdrop of sociopolitical themes, its gaze moving across images as both reckoner and redresser; disruptor and archivist; gatherer and memorialist; manipulator and liar.

For further details on this spotlight, including where to purchase screening tickets, click here.

The documentary films in True Lies are not real, nor are they unreal. They’re what filmmaker and photographer RaMell Ross calls “true lies”—real myths, experimental truths and hybrid narratives that blur the lines between what is and what is not. In this Spotlight, stories take the form of psychedelic portraits and reimagined cities; revived mothers and ghostly liberators; fictional ethnographies and true performances that both horrify and enlighten.

For further details on this spotlight, including where to purchase screening tickets, click here.

“If I could write about what has happened,” says Mexican land defender Isela González Díaz, “I would title it The Devil Stole Our Laughter.” In this rich collection of films, loss is the devil’s weapon of choice—painfully wielded over land and life, power and infrastructure, and the historical gains of generations past. Existing in the aftermath, these films present individuals and communities moving (through) earth and sky in search of what truly remains.

For further details on this spotlight, including where to purchase screening tickets, click here.

Finally, the Spotlight Children of the Sun—inspired by the late Lebanese painter and poet Etel Adnan—oscillates between the sociopolitical geographies of Palestine and Lebanon, whose histories intertwine with deep and harrowing complexity. In this lineup, Palestinian and Lebanese directors turn to cinematic inquiry as they traverse politics and power cuts, landscapes and loss, migration and war. In response to annihilatory rhetoric describing Palestinians as "children of darkness," this Spotlight offers a favourite motif and reclamation in Adnan's work as a descriptor instead.

For further details on this spotlight, including where to purchase screening tickets, click here.

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Committed to cultivating curiosity and critical thought, DOXA 2024 delivers some of the very best in contemporary documentary cinema over 11 days. DOXA Documentary Film Festival runs May 2-12, 2024, offering an exceptional selection of films, filmmaker Q+A’s and Industry events. Select screenings will include live and pre-recorded filmmaker Q+As and extended discussions. Festival tickets and passes will be available starting Wednesday, April 3rd; for further information, call the DOXA office at 604.646.3200.

DOXA is presented by The Documentary Media society, a Vancouver-based non-profit, charitable society. DOXA is presented on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) territory.

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To view the full program of screenings and events, and to reserve your tickets, click here.