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Cairo-based Mad Distribution has acquired Jonathan Millet’s Critics’ Week opener Ghost Trail from mk2 Films, Somali director Mo Harawe’s Un Certain Regard drama The Village Next To Paradise from Totem Films and Anne-Marie Jacir’s upcoming All Before You for release in the Middle East and North Africa.

They are three of 30 titles secured by Mad Distribution for Mena territories, which also include Saif Hammash’s Palestinian short Deer’s Tooth, selected for La Cinef, and Rayane Mcirdi’s Algerian-French short After The Sun, which plays in Directors’ Fortnight.

The distribution arm of indie studio Mad Solutions plans...

With Hot Docs’ marquee market event the Forum and its sidebar operations back to live action, and the festival’s 30th anniversary adding a layer of buzzy excitement, docmakers and industry pros from Western Canada are hauling out a bumper crop of adventurous docs for audiences and buyers, and chatting in the real world about new projects with potential Canadian and international partners and funders.

Nine Western Canada-made doc features span Hot Docs’ programs, with stories that go deeper into landscapes and beyond cultural stereotypes.

Kathleen Jayme’s and Asia Youngman’s “I’m Just Here for the Riot” (ESPN 30 for 30), about violence that erupted after the Vancouver Canucks’ loss of the Stanley Cup final in 2011, is one of three titles world-premiering in the Canadian Spectrum competition.

“The riot was a story that no one had ever really talked about,” said Youngman, who’s currently working on a film about...

Freestyle Digital Media has secured the North American distrubtuion rights to On Thin Ice, a social justice-themed sports documentary featuring athletes Allyson Felix, Evander Holyfield, Robbie Rogers, Apolo Ohno, Michael Sam, Aimee Mullins, and Greg Louganis. Directed by Keli Price, the film will be available to rent and own on February 2. The doc calls attention to athletes who have struggled for acceptance due to race, religion, sexual orientation, and other prejudices. The film chronicles the life of filmmaker Keli Price’s Great-grandfather Jack Brooks, who escaped the anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe in 1923 and went on to become one of the premier speed skaters of interwar America. He skated with the U.S. Olympic team, and traveled to Lake Placid in 1932 for the III Olympic Winter Games. But his dream was cut short. Singled out because of the religion he practiced and the place he called home, the “speedster from...