Challenging traditional gender roles and toxic notions of masculinity, Daddy brings an outsider perspective to the Hot Docs World Showcase programme.
The 2020 Hot Docs Film Festival features the International Premiere of Daddy, which follows American anthropologist, Brendan Cooney, in his new full-time job as a stay-at-home father. As part of the Hot Docs World Showcase programme, Daddy gives audiences an outsider perspective on fatherhood when Brendan turns the ethnographer’s lens on himself to examine his own childhood abandonment in an exploration of fatherhood and a journey to adapt after settling to a new life in a new country. Daddy will be accessible on the new online Hot Docs platform as of May 28, 2020 – June 15, 2020.
“There should be another word for this than love…” Brendan says, reflecting on fatherhood. After a life of travelling around the world to study foreign cultures, Brendan settled in Denmark with his wife and became the father of their child. It’s a full-time job, since finding work in Denmark is challenging for Brendan, who doesn’t speak Danish. With all vanity long disposed of, and a self-irony that he must have picked up here, Brendan’s life becomes the subject of his professional and often funny perspective of being a father. Director and cinematographer Lars Leonhardt filmed over the course of six years to capture an honest and unsentimental portrayal of the highs and lows of fatherhood, ultimately challenging gender roles and toxic notions of masculinity.
Daddy is produced by Bullitt Film, producers of ‘We Could Be Heroes’ which won the Best International Documentary Film Award at the 2018 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.‘We Could Be Heroes’ was directed by Hind Bensari, marking the first time an African filmmaker took the coveted award at Hot Docs.