Hot Docs 2025 - Parade: Queer Acts of Love and Resistance Review

"Yonge Street was one of the gayest streets in the world" - a statement made by one of Parade: Queer Acts of Love and Resistance's first appearing subjects. The crowd at Hot Docs opening night screening of the 2025 festival subsequently responds with plenty of cheers and applause. This, in essence, summarizes why this feels deeply appropriate as the film to open the festival.  Parade is an equal parts crowd-pleasing, informative, moving and entertaining documentary that is Toronto-centric by nature. It's substantial coverage of one of the most significant civil rights movements in Canada's history will continue to be eaten up by Toronto crowds as it did at the festival, and for good reason. 

Director Noam Gonick is attempting to cover a very expansive amount of ground here. With only 95 minutes to cover what feels like a pretty conclusive timeline of the Canadian LGBTQ+ rights movement, they've taken a fascinating structural approach to create a balanced and digestible piece. The film plays out in a vignetted, anthology-esque fashion, covering many of the most impactful LGBTQ+ rights milestones in Canada, one at a time. A poignant title card opens each segment and a rotating roster of subjects, from various backgrounds, speak about their experiences as part of it. Portions of the film that cover such events as Operation Soap, a police raid against several Toronto gay bathhouses in the early 1980's, are amongst the most harrowing and captivating. The films rush to cover it all often creates a sense of bloating that may be overwhelming to those unaware of the history, but it's hard not to admire how much ambition backs it.

However, the film truly shines in its use of some incredibly stunning archival footage of the events it covers. Various segments are made so much more palatable and lived in by the historical footage that backs it, and it's deeply impressive how thoroughly researched and plotted out the placement of the archival stuff is. The quality of the footage and the incredibly thoughtful placement of it is what makes the film truly stand out, amongst its rather traditional use of talking head interviews. Anyone who has a deep interest in Canada and Toronto's history, queer, political or otherwise, will be delighted by the treasure trove of historical video put to use here. It's a solid compromise to the somewhat bloated and wordy, albeit crowd-pleasing skeleton it's all placed within.

Score: 6/10

Parade: Queer Acts of Love & Resistance screens again at Hot Docs at the following times:

• Saturday, April 26th @ 11:15am - Hot Docs Cinema

• Saturday, May 3rd @ 10am - TIFF Lightbox

Tickets can be purchased at hotdocs.ca. The film will be released by the NFB, with a release date to be determined.