Hot Docs 2008

In 2005 Lydia Cacho, a human-rights journalist in Mexico, is arrested by police after she exposes a powerful paedophile ring in her book, Demons of Eden. Cacho gives voice to the young victims of Cancun's underworld, delivering a stinging indictment of businessmen Jean Succar Kuri and Kamel Nacif Borge, as well as the politicians who worked with them on the cover-up. The documentary, made over an 18-month period, follows Cacho as she fights the people who are attempting to silence her. Not only does the documentary reveal the rampant violence against women and children in Mexico, it also exposes the dangers that journalists face there. Horrifying and powerful, the doc is a tribute to one woman's vision and drive to make a difference, even at the expense of her own safety.

This lyrical doc explores with sensitivity and breathtaking imagery the lives of three Mexicans who live, like many, on the edge of hope. The lives of a boxer, a fisherman and an ailing old woman are intertwined. Each prays to God to deliver him or her a specific miracle. Meanwhile, they struggle to survive. Ex-voto For Three Souls is a film about the unbelievable human capacity to resist, adapt and create. -Shannon Abel screening with SECOND SIGHT

In February 2006, while 63 miners remained buried under the rubble of an explosion at the Pasta de Conchos coal mine in Mexico, the media and federal government performed a complicated fandango of disinformation, cover-up and gross negligence. The Fallen is a gripping account of this historic mining conflict. Owned by the country's largest mining company, the mine was not safe. The events that ensued after the accident, the delayed rescue attempts, the illegal overthrow of the miners' union leader and the revelations about President Vicente Fox's administration's complicity in the cover-up are jaw-dropping. And the film explores other conflicts between the underpaid, overworked miners and the Mexican government's vested interest in keeping mining companies happy. Firsthand accounts by journalists, world-renowned experts, the miners and the working class families who make a living from the mines all paint a terrifying picture of corruption and greed. While the bodies of the miners have still not been recovered, their legacy will never be forgotten. -Shannon Abel Co-presented with Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts

A penetrating humanistic portrait of a contemporary exodus, The Infinite Border profiles a handful of the hundreds of thousands of Central American migrants who enter Mexico clandestinely each year en route to the promised land of the United States. Some are incarcerated and some are sent back, only to return undeterred. Some bear the brutal evidence of the dangers of riding the rails northward in the form of severed limbs. Meanwhile, construction of the 30-foot-high, 700-mile-long fence separating the United States from Mexico continues unabated. Lovingly shot in contemplative long takes, this poetic film evinces a casual, trusting rapport between filmmaker and subject. The Infinite Border offers an evocative story of determination and hope through the lives and dreams of those who travel in search of a better life. Co-presented with SÍ-SÍ CINE TORONTO LATIN FILM FESTIVAL.

In January 2003, 21-year-old Rosa Estela Olera Jiménez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico working as a nanny in Austin, Texas, is brought to trial for the homicide of 21-month-old Bryan Guttierez, a young boy who died under mysterious circumstances while in her care. The prosecution is relentless in its demonization of Jiménez, a soft-spoken mother of two who was working to one day buy her mother a house and build a better life for herself in the land of opportunity. With a sweeping, lyrical focus, the film encompasses the obstacles, prejudices and Sisyphean struggles faced by many Mexican migrant workers who leave their lives behind to pursue the American dream. A powerful and heart-wrenching documentary, My Life Inside alternates between tense courtroom drama and moving personal profile, providing a cautionary tale about the experience of outsiders in the United States.

Winner of the Guadalajara International Film Festival's award for best Mexican documentary, Old Thieves is an often humorous look at a generation of charming professional thieves who reached the peak of their criminal career in 1960s Mexico. The four notorious bandits interviewed were legends in their time, belonging to a subculture of petty crooks who adhered to a strict code of ethics-they never killed or harmed anyone they stole from. Many of the thieves became celebrities; handsome and well-dressed, their exploits were the stuff of Hollywood crime capers. The most famous of the bunch, El Carrizo, proudly recalls the time he unknowingly robbed the home of the president of Mexico, and the deal he struck with his nemesis, a police inspector who had been tracking him for years, in exchange for his freedom. Intimate interviews and archival footage vividly recall a time when the line between criminal and legal was disturbingly blurred. -Shannon Abel