Tetro (2009)
"In this phase of my career," says writer-director-producer Francis Ford Coppola, "I want to do the things I want to do out of the love of wanting to do it and not care what people say." Shot in crisp black-and-white with flashbacks and striking ballet sequences in colour, his movie tells of young Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich) trailing his older brother Tetro (Vincent Gallo) to Buenos Aires. But the real show is in Coppola's commentary: explanatory, defensive, argumentative and, as ever, passionate about film.
Prom Night in Mississippi (2009)
Actor Morgan Freeman once offered to pay for a senior prom in Charleston, Miss., if both black and white students could attend. Nothing came of it until director Paul Saltzman asked Freeman whether the offer was still open. "And there was this wonderful pause on the other end of the phone, and Morgan said, 'Oh. Okay.'" The resulting documentary, one of four new DVDs in the Hot Docs series distributed by Kinosmith, nimbly captures the prom and the painfully mixed reactions of students and parents.