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.
Afghan Film also known as Afghan Film Organization (AFO) is Afghanistan's state-run film company, established in 1968. The former president is Sahraa Karimi, who attained a PhD in Cinema from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and is its first female president. The Afghan Film is now headed by Mawlawi Shafiullah Javid "Afghan".
The Boxing Girls of Kabul is a 2012 Canadian documentary film directed by Ariel Nasr. The film follows young women boxers, under which Sadaf Rahimi, and their coach Sabir Sharifi at Afghanistan’s female boxing academy, as these athletes face harassment and threats in their efforts to represent their country in international competition and attempt to qualify for the 2012 Olympic Games.
Gulîstan, Land of Roses is a 2016 feature-length documentary film about women guerillas in a Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) Free Women's Unit, in combat against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, directed by the Kurdish Montreal filmmaker Zaynê Akyol. Shot in Iraqi Kurdistan, the film is co-produced Montreal's Périphéria Productions, Germany's MitosFilm and the National Film Board of Canada.
Hot Docs at Home is a Canadian television programming block, which premiered April 16, 2020 on CBC Television. Introduced as a special series during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, the series aired several feature documentary films that had been scheduled to premiere at the 2020 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival before its postponement. The films aired on CBC Television at 8 p.m. EST on Thursdays and on the CBC's Documentary Channel later the same evening, and were made available for streaming on the CBC Gem platform.
A Woman, My Mother is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Claude Demers and released in 2019. The film documents Demers's efforts to learn more about his birth mother, who gave him up for adoption but later died before Demers ever had the opportunity to meet her as an adult, leaving him with many gaps in his understanding that he could fill in only with imaginative speculation.
The Walrus and the Whistleblower is a 2020 Canadian documentary film directed by Nathalie Bibeau. The film profiles Phil Demers, a former employee of Marineland who attempted to blow the whistle on allegedly inhumane treatment of animals at the institution.
9/11 Kids is a 2020 Canadian documentary film, directed by Elizabeth St. Philip. The film profiles the ongoing effects of the September 11 attacks on the United States through the stories of the now young adults who were in the classroom where President George W. Bush was reading the grade-school level reading exercise "The Pet Goat" when he was interrupted and informed of the attacks.
There's No Place Like This Place, Anyplace is a 2020 Canadian documentary film, directed by Lulu Wei. The film profiles the issue of gentrification in Toronto, Ontario through the history, demolition and redevelopment of the historic Honest Ed's department store and its effects on the larger Mirvish Village neighbourhood.
Prayer for a Lost Mitten is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Jean-François Lesage and released in 2020. The film centres on the lost and found office of the Montreal Metro system.
First We Eat is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Suzanne Crocker and released in 2020. The film documents the attempts of Crocker and her family, after a landslide temporarily blocked highway access to their hometown of Dawson City, Yukon, to spend a full year exclusively consuming food that had been hunted, fished, gathered, grown or raised locally, while carefully considering the environmental and social impacts of modern commercial transport of food. The documentary film premiered on May 28, 2020 on Hot Docs.
Call Me Human is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Kim O'Bomsawin and released in 2020. The film is a portrait of Innu poet Joséphine Bacon.
Wandering: A Rohingya Story is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Mélanie Carrier and Olivier Higgins and released in 2020. The film is a portrait of the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh, which houses a large number of refugees from the Rohingya conflict in Myanmar.
Ariel Nasr is a Canadian documentary film director. He is most noted as director of the films The Boxing Girls of Kabul, which won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Short Documentary at the 1st Canadian Screen Awards in 2013, and The Forbidden Reel, which was a winner of the Audience Award at the 2020 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, and as producer of Buzkashi Boys, which was an Academy Award nominee for Best Live Action Short Film at the 85th Academy Awards in 2013.
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.
Bobbi Jo Hart is an American-Canadian documentary filmmaker based in Montreal, Quebec. Hart was born in California and raised in Cottage Grove, Oregon. She is most noted for her films Rebels on Pointe, which won the award for Best Canadian Feature at the Inside Out Film and Video Festival in 2017 and received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Biography or Arts Documentary Program or Series at the 7th Canadian Screen Awards in 2019, and Fanny: The Right to Rock, which won the Rogers Audience Award at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and the award for Best Canadian Film at Inside Out in 2021.
Geographies of Solitude is a Canadian documentary film by Jacquelyn Mills that was released in 2022. The film is guided by Zoe Lucas, a naturalist and environmentalist who lives on Nova Scotia's Sable Island, where she catalogues the island's wild Sable Island horses, and endeavours to preserve its unique ecosystem.
Rojek is a 2022 Canadian documentary film written, directed and produced by Zaynê Akyol. It is about the recovery of Kurdistan from the Rojava–Islamist conflict with a special emphasis on interviews with imprisoned former members of the Islamic State about their motivations. It was selected as the Canadian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards.
