Alanis Obomsawin, is an Abenaki American-Canadian filmmaker, singer, artist, and activist primarily known for her documentary films. Born in New Hampshire, United States and raised primarily in Quebec, Canada, she has written and directed many National Film Board of Canada documentaries on First Nations issues. Obomsawin is a member of Film Fatales independent women filmmakers.
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.
Charles Officer was a Canadian film and television director, writer, actor, and professional hockey player.
Liz Marshall is a Canadian filmmaker based in Toronto. Since the 1990s, she has directed and produced independent projects and been part of film and television teams, creating broadcast, theatrical, campaign and cross-platform documentaries shot around the world. Marshall's feature length documentaries largely focus on social justice and environmental themes through strong characters. She is known for The Ghosts in Our Machine and for Water on the Table, for which she also produced impact and engagement campaigns, and attended many global events as a public speaker. Water on the Table features water rights activist, author and public figure Maude Barlow. The Ghosts in Our Machine features animal rights activist, photojournalist and author Jo-Anne McArthur.
Angry Inuk is a 2016 Canadian Inuit-themed feature-length documentary film written and directed by Alethea Arnaquq-Baril that defends the Inuit seal hunt, as the hunt is a vital means for Inuit to sustain themselves. Subjects in Angry Inuk include Arnaquq-Baril herself as well as Aaju Peter, an Inuit seal hunt advocate, lawyer and seal fur clothing designer who depends on the sealskins for her livelihood. Partially shot in the filmmaker's home community of Iqaluit, as well as Kimmirut and Pangnirtung, where seal hunting is essential for survival, the film follows Peter and other Inuit to Europe in an effort to have the EU Ban on Seal Products overturned. The film also criticizes NGOs such as Greenpeace and the International Fund for Animal Welfare for ignoring the needs of vulnerable northern communities who depend on hunting for their livelihoods by drawing a false distinction between subsistence-driven Inuit hunters and profit-driven commercial hunters.
Aaju Peter is an Inuk lawyer, activist and sealskin clothes designer. In 2012, she received the Order of Canada.
A Better Man is a 2017 Canadian documentary film co-directed by Attiya Khan and Lawrence Jackman in which Khan, a survivor of domestic abuse, meets with the man who abused her to see if he can take responsibility to heal and repair the harms he created. The first filmed encounter between her and her ex-boyfriend, identified only as "Steve," took place in April 2013. After the initial contact, several of the conversations were facilitated by Tod Augusta-Scott, a prominent counselor in the domestic violence field. The film also follows them back to their old high school as well as an apartment in Ottawa, and shows how the violence still affects Khan.
Resurrecting Hassan is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Carlo Guillermo Proto and released in 2016. The documentary centres on the Hartings, a family of blind musicians in Montreal who supported themselves by busking in the Guy-Concordia station of the Montreal Metro.
Manic is a 2017 Canadian documentary film directed by Kalina Bertin. The film depicts Bertin's efforts, in response to a family history of bipolar disorder, to investigate parts of her father's prior life in Montserrat that she did not know about; she ultimately uncovers the revelations that her father was a cult leader who also suffered from bipolar disorder, and who had, unbeknownst to Bertin until making the film, also fathered at least 12 other children with four other women.
Sophy Romvari is a Canadian film director, writer, and actress. She attracted widespread acclaim for her short film Still Processing (2020). The film premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival and was later released online by Mubi.
Matt Gallagher is a Canadian film director, producer and cinematographer from Windsor, Ontario.
Pailin Wedel is a Thai-American photojournalist, film director and producer best known for directing, producing and co-writing the documentary Hope Frozen (2018), which was picked up for distribution through Netflix in 2020. She served as producer on Operation Thailand, a documentary series that explored Thailand's medical tourism industry, and as a director on 101 East, a weekly current affairs series created by Al Jazeera. Prior to her work in film and video journalism, Wedel created content for multiple publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. With her husband, she also founded 2050 Productions, a Bangkok-based documentary team, in 2016.
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.
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.
Rich Williamson is a Canadian film director, cinematographer and editor, most noted as codirector with Shasha Nakhai of the 2021 film Scarborough. The film won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Picture, and Nakhai and Williamson won the award for Best Director, at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022.
Alison Duke is a Canadian film director, producer, and writer. She is the co-founder and director of Oya Media.
Twice Colonized is a documentary film, directed by Lin Alluna and released in 2023. A coproduction of companies from Canada, Denmark and Greenland, the film profiles Aaju Peter, an Inuk lawyer and activist who has lived in both Greenland and Nunavut, profiling both her lifelong fight for justice for Inuit peoples and the personal struggles and traumas she dealt with along the way.
Kalina Bertin is a Canadian documentary filmmaker, most noted for her 2017 film Manic.
Claire Sanford is a Canadian film director and cinematographer based in Montreal, Quebec. She is most noted for her 2022 short documentary film Violet Gave Willingly, which was named to the Toronto International Film Festival's annual year-end Canada's Top Ten list for 2022, and received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Short Documentary at the 12th Canadian Screen Awards in 2024.
Lin Alluna is a Danish film director. In 2017, she graduated as one of only six documentary film directors from the National Film School of Denmark, and was selected as one of the new “Nordic Talents” that same year by Nordisk Film & TV Fond.
