The Betty Youson Award for Best Canadian Short Documentary is a Canadian award, presented annually by the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival to honour a film judged as the best Canadian short documentary film in that year's festival program. The award comes with a $3,000 prize from festival sponsors John and Betty Youson.
The award was presented for the first time in 2018. Prior to that year, a single award for Best Short Documentary Film, inclusive of both Canadian and international films, was presented. Concurrently with the creation of the Betty Youson Award, a separate award for international short films was also created.
The jury have also usually given an honorable mention in addition to the overall winner.
Year | Film | Filmmaker(s) | Ref |
---|---|---|---|
2018 | Prince's Tale | Jamie Miller | [1] |
Vika | Christian Borys, Marta Iwanek | ||
2019 | Kora: A Circle Life | Tenzin Sedon | [2] |
Mothers Of | Ross Lai | ||
2020 | êmîcêtôcêt: Many Bloodlines | Theola Ross | [3] |
In the Shadow of the Pines | Anne Koizumi | ||
2021 | Ain't No Time for Women | Sarra El Abed | [4] |
The Hairdresser | Lorraine Price | ||
2022 | Perfecting the Art of Longing | Kitra Cahana | [5] |
The Benevolents (Les Bienvaillants) | Sarah Baril Gaudet | ||
2023 | Last Respects | Megan Durnford | [6] |
2024 | Am I the Skinniest Person You’ve Ever Seen? | Eisha Marjara | [7] |
The Sparkle (L'Artifice) | Isabelle Grignon-Francke |
The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is the largest documentary festival in North America. The event takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 27th edition of the festival took place online throughout May and June 2020. In addition to the annual festival, Hot Docs owns and operates the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, administers multiple production funds, and runs year-round screening programs including Doc Soup and Hot Docs Showcase.
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah is a 2015 documentary-short film exploring the life and work of French director Claude Lanzmann. The film was written, directed, and produced by British filmmaker and journalist Adam Benzine.
Tasha Hubbard is a Canadian First Nations/Cree filmmaker and educator based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Hubbard's credits include three National Film Board of Canada documentaries exploring Indigenous rights in Canada: Two Worlds Colliding, a 2004 Canada Award-winning short film about the Saskatoon freezing deaths, Birth of a Family, a 2017 feature-length documentary about four siblings separated during Canada's Sixties Scoop, and nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, a 2019 Hot Docs and DOXA Documentary award-winning documentary which examines the death of Colten Boushie, a young Cree man, and the subsequent trial and acquittal of the man who shot him.
Prince's Tale is a Canadian short documentary film, directed by Jamie Miller and released in 2018. The film profiles Prince Amponsah, a Toronto actor rebuilding his career as a performer after an apartment fire which left his body badly scarred and resulted in the amputation of both of his arms.
nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Tasha Hubbard and released in 2019. The film centres on the 2016 death of Colten Boushie, and depicts his family's struggle to attain justice after the controversial acquittal of Boushie's killer. Narrated by Hubbard, the film also includes a number of animated segments which contextualize the broader history of indigenous peoples of Canada.
êmîcêtôsêt-Many Bloodlines is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Theola Ross and released in 2020. The film documents the experience of Ross, a queer-identified Cree woman, and her partner as they pursue in vitro fertilisation treatment after deciding to raise a child together.
The Lindalee Tracey Award is an annual film award, presented in memory of Canadian documentary filmmaker Lindalee Tracey to emerging filmmakers whose works reflect values of social justice and a strong personal point of view. Created by Peter Raymont, Tracey's widower and former filmmaking partner, through his production studio White Pine Pictures, the award is presented annually at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival; however, the award is not limited to documentary films, but may be awarded to films in any genre, and films do not have to have been screened as part of the Hot Docs program to be eligible.
In the Shadow of the Pines is a Canadian animated short documentary film, directed by Anne Koizumi and released in 2020. An exploration of her grief around the death of her father in the early 2010s, the film centres on an imagined conversation with him about her childhood shame that he was employed as the janitor at her school, thus exposing her to her classmates as the daughter of a working class immigrant.
The Hot Docs Audience Awards are annual film awards, presented by the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival to the most popular films as voted by festival audiences. There are currently two awards presented: the Hot Docs Audience Award, presented since 2001 to the most popular film overall regardless of nationality, and the Rogers Audience Award, presented since 2017 to the most popular Canadian film.
Zo Reken is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Emanuel Licha and released in 2021. Taking its name from a Haitian Creole slang term for the Toyota Land Cruiser, the film is an exploration of the impact of the international humanitarian aid apparatus on Haiti, centering on the ways in which it can be both a necessary lifeline and an instrument of economic inequality and repression.
Ain't No Time for Women is a Canadian short documentary film, directed by Sarra El Abed and released in 2021. The film centres on a group of women in a hair salon in Tunis, and their reactions to the 2019 Tunisian presidential election.
The Hot Docs Award for Best Canadian Feature Documentary is an annual Canadian film award, presented by the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival to the film selected by jury members as the year's best Canadian feature film in the festival program. The award was presented for the first time in 1998; prior to that year, awards were presented in various genre categories, but no special distinction for Canadian films was presented. The award is sponsored by the Documentary Organization of Canada and Telefilm Canada, and carries a cash prize of $10,000.
Unloved: Huronia's Forgotten Children is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Barri Cohen and released in 2022. The film documents the history of child abuse at Ontario's Huronia Regional Centre facility for developmentally disabled children, based in part on the story of her own two older brothers, Alfred and Louis, who died at the institution.
Jason Loftus is a Canadian documentary filmmaker. He is most noted as the director of the documentary film Eternal Spring, which was selected as Canada's submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards.
Kathleen Jayme is a Canadian documentary filmmaker from Vancouver, British Columbia. She is most noted for the films Finding Big Country and The Grizzlie Truth, which examine the history of the ill-fated Vancouver Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association.
Mystic Ball is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Greg Hamilton and released in 2006. The film profiles the Burmese sport of chinlone.
The Benevolents is a Canadian short documentary film, directed by Sarah Baril Gaudet and released in 2021. An exploration of contemporary loneliness and the importance of human social connection, the film is a portrait of various people who are training to become volunteers for Tel-Aide, a crisis hotline in Montreal, Quebec.
Caiti Blues is a Canadian-French documentary film, directed by Justine Harbonnier and released in 2023. The film is a portrait of Caiti Lord, a young musician who is living in an artists' colony in Madrid, New Mexico.
Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story is a 2024 Canadian documentary film, directed by Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee. The film is a portrait of Jackie Shane, the pioneering transgender singer who was a prominent figure in the Toronto music scene in the 1960s before virtually disappearing from public life after 1971.
The Soldier's Lagoon is a Canadian-Colombian documentary film, directed by Pablo Álvarez Mesa and released in 2024. The film profiles a lake high in the Andes mountains in Colombia, where the bodies of over 200 soldiers who died during Simón Bolívar's 1819 march across the Andes are still found.