Hot Docs 2018 Reviews: Inventing Tomorrow, Cielo, The Fourth Estate

Apr 30, 2018- Permalink

Inventing Tomorrow

Laura Nix’s Inventing Tomorrow is an inspiring look at science-minded high school students from around the world who have assembled in Los Angeles for the 2017 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Unlike the adult politicians, these young minds believe in science and facts and have the optimism that their ideas can solve problems facing their countries.

A pair of Taylor Swift-quoting Indonesian girls devise a method to filter dangerous by-products from the country’s offshore tin mining. Another girl from India lives near a lake that occasionally catches on fire, while excessive detergents in the water lead to clouds of bubbles floating across roads. She devises a water testing system where data entry can be easily crowd-sourced. A group from Mexico devise a building paint that absorbs air pollutants, while a 15-year-old from Hawaii tracks arsenic levels in a pond in his town deposited by the debris of multiple tsunamis.

Nix takes us into their homes as they nervously prepare for the science fair, supported by proud families. We see the awe of visiting LA, their pop culture mecca, and the sweet interactions with students of the opposite sex from around the world. They defend their projects in front of tough questions from the judges and you’ll come away wondering why this group of intrepid thinkers couldn’t be in charge instead of the science-phobic fools many countries seem to be stuck with.

The saddest thing about Alison McAlpine’s exploration of the night sky, Cielo, is knowing that, if you’re a city dweller, there’s too much light pollution to see the same thing that you see above the Chilean desert. Whether interviewing the scientists at the Las Campanas observatory or local residents who debate how the solar system works, McAlpine gives us a look at how the vast amount of stars above them leads to so many questions. She gives us space (pardon the pun) to experience this ourselves, with stretches of silence that just allow us to take in the beautiful stellar cinematography. Cielo is the type of doc you have to see in a darkened theatre on a big screen. Watching this on a phone or tablet just will not cut it.

I ended my day with the first episode of Liz Garbus’ Showtime series The Fourth Estate, which takes us behind the scenes of the New York Times’ coverage of the circus sideshow known as the Trump presidency. This first episode takes us through the administration’s first one hundred days, a time that saw the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and saw a country coming to terms with a president who tossed all norms aside. That’s a big question in this episode. How does The Grey Lady, as the Times is called, deal with an administration that is the political equivalent of an Ed Hardy shirt?

The Fourth Estate doesn’t answer big journalistic questions – at 100 days nobody’s even sure what the big questions are yet – but for news junkies it shows us how the sausage is made. We see the New York and Washington editors battle over the wording of a headline and reporters working their sources as another story breaks while the current one is still unfinished. For people who think this is all a show for Trump, one telling scene with Maggie Haberman lends credibility to that opinion. A constant target of his Twitter tirades, Haberman and Trump go way back to her New York Post days and he has an amiable conversation with her on the phone as the repeal of the Affordable Care Act falls apart. Trump seems glad to have it behind him, like a storyline on a show that was experimented with and then tossed aside. Talking to Haberman on the phone, it’s a different Trump than the one we see railing against the media at rallies. If the news cycle hasn’t worn you out already, then The Fourth Estate will be worth watching.

For more information on the 2018 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and for tickets and showtimes visit hotdocs.ca.