From Scotland With Love is playing from April 15-19 at Bloor Hot Docs.
Transfixed
While Bruce Springsteen and Bryan Adams are busy rallying the pop world against backward transgender and LGBT laws in the United States, Alon Kol's Canadian documentary provides a more intimate, on-the-ground look at the everyday problems (and there are many) that members of the community face. Kol's film focuses on Toronto's Martine Stonehouse, who comes up against a seemingly infinite number of obstacles in her journey to transition from male to female. But while the doc highlights myriad dilemmas and paradoxes facing the transgender community, Kol's work feels too raw, unpolished and unfocused to make much of an impact. There's little doubt the director is working here with a kind heart and an open mind, but Transfixed fails to deliver a compelling narrative, and even becomes a frustrating exercise thanks to its slow doling out of information. Barry Hertz
The Saver
Centring a film around a novice teenage actor is always a risky proposition. Is it a chance to shine a spotlight on an as-yet-unheralded talent, or an optimistic error in judgment? Those questions surely must have been running through the mind of filmmaker Wiebke von Carolsfeld after she cast relative newcomer Imajyn Cardinal as her lead in the bleak drama The Saver. Sure, Cardinal came with a pedigree – her mother is Blackstone star Michelle Thrush – but aside from a few spots on television, the young actor has never proven herself. In The Saver, the gamble pays off and then some, with Cardinal delivering a nuanced, devastating performance as a 15-year-old struggling to provide for herself after her mother (Thrush, naturally) suffers a sudden fatal heart attack. While von Carolsfeld's film can be unrelenting in its dourness, Cardinal leaves a lasting impact every time she appears on screen, which is fortunate, as there's barely a frame without her in it. Barry Hertz
Robin and Mark and Richard III
My kingdom for a better agent? A king gets only third billing in an inspiring documentary that explores the mentorial bond between the late theatre director Robin Phillips and the comedic Kids in the Hall actor Mark McKinney, as the pair rehearses Shakespeare at Phillips's home outside Stratford, Ont. (April 15-19, Bloor Hot Docs)
A fascinating endeavour of film editing combines archival footage and a score by singer-songwriter King Creosote to unconventionally tell a story of love, loss, resistance, migration, work and play. A uniquely conceived love letter. (April 15-19, Bloor Hot Docs)
Prisoner X
Gaurav Seth's sci-fi film promises to have it all: An apocalyptic setting! Espionage! Time travel! The trick, of course, will be in seeing if Seth can unite those enticing elements into a cohesive feature. (14A, Carlton)
Colonia
After debuting at last year's Toronto International Film Festival to a resounding chorus of "meh," Florian Gallenberger's 1970s-set drama finally makes its way to a screen outside the festival circuit. Still, it might be of interest to super-fans of Harry Potter's Emma Watson, who stars here alongside the always impressive Daniel Bruhl as a couple who get entangled in a cult while on the run from the Chilean military. (18A, Carlton)
Regression
Another Emma Watson film, Regression is a Toronto-shot thriller that uses the controversy surrounding "repressed-memory" therapy as the basis for a cult-focused horror flick. Ethan Hawke, no stranger to the genre thanks to his work on Sinister and The Purge, co-stars. (14A, Yonge-Dundas)
Cinéfranco Special Edition: Cinéma Québécois
In which a two-day mini-festival offers five francophone features, some with English subtitles. Kids can put their French lessons to work Saturday morning at a screening of the snowball-warring La guerre des tuques, an animated 2015 adaptation of the 1984 family film The Dog Who Stopped the War. (Alliance Française Toronto Downtown Campus, April 16 to 17; 2016.cinefranco.com/en/)
Brad Wheeler