If you haven’t sat in the dark since your laser eye surgery, now is the time: Hot Docs, Canada’s International Documentary Festival, is scheduled to run this year from April 26 to May 6.

This year’s festival will take place in the organization’s new and permanent stage: the revitalized Bloor Hot Docs Cinema.

After a seven-month renovation the historic Bloor Cinema, built on Bloor Street in 1941, reopened last month as the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema.

This year’s Festival will screen 189 docs from over 50 countries making it the largest documentary film festival and marketplace in North America.

Highlights from this year’s Hot Docs include the Canadian premiere of Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, which offers viewers a very personal vignette on the Chinese activist and artist, Ai Weiwei.

Other highlights include The Queen of Versailles, which documents the construction of the America’s largest house, a fanciful recreation of the Palace of Versailles, by an eccentric American billionaire whose housing crisis is compounded by America’s sub-prime crisis.

Tickets for Hot Docs films, which will be viewed both at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema as well as other venues located throughout the downtown area, are only $14.50 and can be bought from the The Hot Docs documentary Box Office at 783 Bathurst St., at hotdocs.ca, or by phone at 416-637-5150.  Multi-film passes are also available.

The HotDocs program guide detailing all 189 films can also be downloaded via the Hot Docs website.

Every Wednesday, Sceneopolis.com  — a new arts and culture subscription website — will bring you the latest from stages across the city.  Sceneopolis subscriptions cost only $45; Metro readers receive a $5 discount with the code: metro5.  To take advantage of exclusive theatre tickets and discounts check out sceneopolis.com.