Citizen Minutes returns to Hot Docs for a third season

Apr 29, 2025- Permalink

Citizen Minutes returns for a third season at the 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival with an initial screening on Wednesday, April 30th at 730pm.

Still from Red Girl Rising

Commissioned by the festival, this collection of short docs looks at Canadians working to make their communities together. If I were to sum them up in three words, I choose inspiration, education and celebration as they show the power and hope that citizens can bring to their world.

  • A Stop Gap Measure (11 min)
  • Hommes-Relais (10 min)
  • La femme équi-LIBRE (9 min)
  • Becoming Ruby (10 min)
  • Crossing the Divide (10 min)
  • Red Girl Rising (12 min)

In A Stop Gap Measure, accessibility activist Luke Anderson shows the work of stopgap.ca to make all bulidings accessible to mobility challenged Canadian, but also highlights how this truly is a stop gap measure that should be replaced my permanent solutions.

Hommes-Relais shows us the work of Manuel, a doctor who left his country for Canada and now works with immigrant men to handle migration grief and show that they have people that share their experience and can rely on.

La femme équi-LIBRE takes us to PEI, where Josée Gallant-Gordon has started an equine thearpy centre that helps people in her community deal with everything from anxiety to PTSD.

Becoming Ruby takes us behind-the-scenes with Ruby Chopstix, Canada’s first drag artist in residence and shows how their program creates a space for queer BIPOC performers and the community to learn and grow from each other.

In a world of polarized politics, Crossing the Divide shows two Canadian women – a Liberal and a Conservative – heading to a US convention to learn ways to engage each other that can be brought back and tried in Canada too.

Finally, in Red Girl Rising, Joyce Jonathan Crone, a Mohawk educator and activist, shows how her work in Huntsville, Ontario is engaging the community to learn and grow from the knowledge of the Indigenous experience.

I highly recommend this series of doc shorts. Citizen Minutes will hopefully inspire you to think of ways to help your fellow citizens too. For more info, visit the Hot Docs site here.