Awards

Hot Docs 2024 Awards

At the 2024 Hot Docs Festival, over $135,000 CAD in cash and prizes will be awarded to filmmakers, including juried awards for films in competition, audience awards determined by ballot, industry prizes recognizing top pitches at the Hot Docs Forum and other special awards categories.

All awards for films in competition are decided by Hot Docs Festival Juries and will be announced at the Hot Docs Awards Presentation on Friday, May 3.

Unless otherwise noted, all prizes are awarded to the director of the winning film.

Films in Competition

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE DOCUMENTARY AWARD
Awarded to an exceptional feature-length documentary in the International Competition program. Hot Docs is pleased to present the winner with a $10,000 cash prize.

BEST CANADIAN FEATURE DOCUMENTARY AWARD
Awarded to an exceptional feature-length documentary in the Canadian Spectrum Competition program. Hot Docs is pleased to present the winner with a $10,000 cash prize.  Supported by Telefilm Canada.

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE-INTERNATIONAL FEATURE DOCUMENTARY  
Awarded to a feature-length documentary in the International Competition program that the jury feels is deserving of special recognition. Hot Docs is pleased to present the winner with a $5,000 cash prize.  Sponsored by A&E.

DGC SPECIAL JURY PRIZE-CANADIAN FEATURE DOCUMENTARY 
Awarded to a feature-length documentary in the Canadian Spectrum Competition program that the jury feels is deserving of special recognition. The award, supported by DGC National, comes with a $5,000 cash prize.

EMERGING INTERNATIONAL FILMMAKER AWARD  
Given to a first- or second-time international filmmaker with a feature film in the International Competition program. The award, supported by the Donner Canadian Foundation, includes a $3,000 cash prize.

THE EARL A. GLICK EMERGING CANADIAN FILMMAKER AWARD 
Given to a first- or second-time Canadian filmmaker with a feature film in the Canadian Spectrum Competition program. The award, supported by the Earl A. Glick Family, includes a $3,000 cash prize.

BEST MID-LENGTH DOCUMENTARY  
Awarded to an exceptional documentary between 41 and 65 minutes in length. Hot Docs is pleased to present the winner with a $3,000 cash prize.

BEST INTERNATIONAL SHORT DOCUMENTARY  
Awarded to an exceptional international documentary up to 40 minutes in length. Hot Docs is pleased to present the winner with a $3,000 cash prize. Sponsored by CNN Collection.

BETTY YOUSON AWARD FOR BEST CANADIAN SHORT DOCUMENTARY 
Awarded to an exceptional Canadian documentary up to 40 minutes in length. Hot Docs is pleased to present the winner with a $3,000 cash prize courtesy of John and Betty Youson. Supported by John and Betty Youson.

LAND|SKY|SEA AWARD
Awarded to an exceptional feature-length documentary in the Land|Sky|Sea Competition program.

THE BILL NEMTIN AWARD FOR BEST SOCIAL IMPACT DOCUMENTARY
The Award recognizes the producers of a film in the International Competition program that has the greatest potential to create social impact, in other words to change attitudes, behaviours and/or policy. The $10,000 cash prize accompanying the award will help enable the winning film team to optimize the impact of the documentary through outreach and marketing activities.

Special Awards Categories

DON HAIG AWARD  
The Don Haig Award is awarded annually to an outstanding Canadian independent producer with a film in the Festival. The Award recognizes creative vision and entrepreneurship as reflected in the work being showcased at Hot Docs, as well as a track record for nurturing emerging Canadian filmmakers. The winner receives a $5,000 cash prize courtesy of the Don Haig Foundation.

View past recipients >>

LINDALEE TRACEY AWARD 
This Award honours an emerging Canadian filmmaker working in the spirit of Lindalee Tracey, whose films reflect a passionate point of view, a strong sense of social justice and "a joie de vivre." The winner is awarded $5,000 in cash from the Lindalee Tracey Fund, a $5,000 in kind voucher from Picture Shop for equipment rentals and services, and a beautiful hand-blown glass sculpture by Andrew Kuntz.

Audience Awards

HOT DOCS AUDIENCE AWARDS 
Hot Docs Audience Awards are awarded to the feature/mid-length documentary and the short documentary that receive the highest rating in an audience poll, determined by votes submitted by Festival audiences after screenings.

Program Awards

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT AWARD 
Presented by the Hot Docs Board of Directors to Raoul Peck.

FOCUS ON
Presented by the Hot Docs Board of Directors to Iris Ng.

Industry Pitch Prizes

CMF-HOT DOCS FORUM CANADIAN PITCH PRIZE
The CMF-Hot Docs Forum Canadian Pitch Prize, presented in partnership with Canada Media Fund, is a $10,000 cash prize that is awarded to the best Canadian pitch at the Hot Docs Forum. The prize money is intended to go towards the production and completion of the winning project.

HOT DOCS first look
Hot Docs first look is a curated access program for philanthropic supporters of and investors in documentary film that grants behind-the-scenes access to the world of documentary. Hot Docs first look participants award the Hot Docs first look prize to up to three of the best pitches. first look prize amount is announced after Festival.

Canadian Features Jury

• Zaynê Akyol
  
  Zaynê Akyol is a Canadian director born in Turkey and of Kurdish origins. After graduating from the École des médias at the Université du Québec à Montréal, she received an award for Most Promising Documentarist from the René-Malo Chair in association with the National Film Board of Canada. She then completed a master’s degree with a cinema concentration, basing her research on relational and creative matters in documentary.

  Akyol directed her first feature documentary, Gulîstan, Land of Roses, in 2016. It depicts Kurdish women fighting against the Islamic State, selected by 80 international film festivals, including 50 nominations and 12 awards. Notably, it won the prestigious Doc Alliance Award at the Locarno Film Festival, awarded jointly by seven of Europe’s most important documentary film festivals.
  
  In 2022, Akyol directed and produced her second feature documentary, Rojek. This film engages in dialogue with those who took part in the creation of the Islamic State and who were—directly or indirectly—responsible for the deaths of the women she featured in her earlier documentary. To date, this film has been selected by numerous international festivals and has already won 14 awards, including the Best Cinematography Award at the MIRAGE Festival, presented by the distinguished Sir Roger Deakins. Rojek represented Canada in the race for the 2024 Oscar for Best International Feature Film.

• Inney Prakash
  
  Inney Prakash is a film programmer and writer based in New York City. He is the founder and artistic director of Prismatic Ground, an experimental festival which will hold its fourth edition in NYC May 8–12, 2024. 
• Shanida Scotland
  
  Shanida Scotland joined Doc Society as Head of Film and Director in 2020. Shanida co-lead’s strategy on the BFI Doc Society Fund and also leads the global film strategy across the organisation, including the newly launched Democracy Story Unit.
  
  Shanida believes in freedom of creative expression, collaboration, empowering audiences to have access to the range of non-fiction storytelling, elevating equity, and the unique ability for non-fiction storytelling to help us understand and express insights into the world we live in.
  
  Shanida is a member of the Documentary Film Council and co-leads the Equity and Broadcast working groups.

International Features Jury

• Jeremy Chua
  
  Jeremy Chua is the General Manager of the Singapore International Film Festival. In 2014, he founded Singapore-based independent film label Potocol as a creative house for distinctive Asian auteurs to produce films, videos, installations, and artwork. His work as producer include Some Rain Must Fall by Qiu Yang (Encounters Jury Prize Berlinale 2024), Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell by Pham Thien An (Cannes Camera d’Or 2023), Tomorrow is a Long Time by Jow Zhi Wei (Berlinale 2023), Last Shadow at First Light by Nicole Midori Woodford (San Sebastian 2023), Autobiography by Makbul Mubarak (FIPRESCI Venice 2022), Glorious Ashes by Bui Thac Chuyen (Nantes Golden Balloon 2022), Rehana Maryam Noor by Abdullah Mohammad Saad (Cannes UCR 2021), A Family Tour by Ying Liang (Opening Film International Competition Locarno 2018), A Yellow Bird by K. Rajagopal (Cannes Critics' Week 2016), and A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery by Lav Diaz (Silver Bear Berlinale 2016). He is an alumnus of EAVE Ties That Bind 2013, Produire au sud 2015, Berlinale Talents 2017, SEAFIC 2017, and Torino Film Lab 2018. He has worked under Marco Mueller as a programmer at the Pingyao International Film Festival 2017–2023. In 2023, he was awarded the FIAPF Award for Outstanding Contribution to Asia Pacific Cinema by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations.
• Pia Lundberg
  
  Pia Lundberg is the new artistic director of Göteborg International Film Festival in Sweden. She previously spent five years as Sweden's cultural attaché in London. Before that, she was Head of International at the Swedish Film Institute.
• Dr. Nataleah Hunter-Young
  
  Dr. Nataleah Hunter-Young is a writer, film curator, and Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. At the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), she is International Programmer responsible for feature selections from Africa and Arab West Asia. Nataleah has supported festival programming at TIFF since 2017, as well as programming for the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and Durban International Film Festival in South Africa. Born and raised in Toronto, Nataleah holds a joint Ph.D. in Communication and Culture from York University and Toronto Metropolitan University.

Land|Sky|Sea Jury

• Chloe Walters-Wallace
  
  Chloe Walters-Wallace is the Director of Regional Initiatives at Firelight Media. She is the creator and executive producer of the award-winning non-fiction anthology series Homegrown, currently in season 2, and the Groundwork Regional Lab, supporting emerging filmmakers of colour based outside of New York and L.A. In 2020, she co-created the Caribbean Film Academy 2.0 at Third Horizon along with Themba Bhebe and has programmed for Blackstar Film Festival’s documentary shorts team for the past four years. Chloe is a 2021 DOC NYC Documentary New Leaders fellow, 2021 Rockwood JustFilms Fellow, a 2015 Ortique Institute Fellow, and a 2007 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. She lives between New York, New Orleans, and Jamaica, is on the board of Third Horizon, and is a former board member of the Color Congress.
• Jane Mote
  
  Jane Mote is an experienced producer and director who supports and trains emerging documentary makers across the world to develop their stories.  She is editorial consultant and a judge for The Whickers, a global fund for first-time documentary makers which has helped realize films such as Hope Frozen, No Simple way Home, Red Herring, and Hollywood Gate.
  
  The former UK MD of Al Gore’s documentary channel Current and Executive Editor of BBC London, Jane has held senior roles at Discovery, Turner Broadcasting, BBC Worldwide, UKTV, and the Africa channel. She has commissioned and exec’d hundreds of hours of TV and feature documentaries.
  
  She has recently been on juries at DMZ Docs, Sunnyside of the Doc, and Miradasdoc. She is co-leading on #DocSafe—an initiative to help safeguard those working in the documentary industry. Her production company beechtobeach trains people to make films on smartphones for the BFI, Women in Film and TV, and other organisations.
  
  Jane was born in Canada but works out of the UK and is a regular industry representative at Hot Docs.
• Paulina Portela
  
  Paulina Portela graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Communications from the Catholic University in Montevideo, Uruguay. She began her career as a film and TV producer in Argentina, Mexico, and Uruguay. For the past 16 years, she has been based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she held positions such as Cinema Coordinator for the Buenos Aires International Independent Cinema, BAFICI, and Senior Production Manager at Viacom International.
  
  In 2010, she founded Compania de Cine, an international distribution company, and sales agency based in Buenos Aires and Montevideo focused on avant-garde and auteur cinema. Films such as Lemebel by Joana Reposi Garibaldi, winner of the Teddy Award in 2019, Night Shot by Carolina Moscoso, awarded the Grand Prix International Competition at FIDMarseille 2020, Camouflage by Jonathan Perrel premiered at Berlinale 2022, Punto de Encuentro, premiered at Hot Docs in 2022, and In the Shadow of Light, premiered at Sheffield 2023 are some of the highlights of their catalogue.
  
  She was a member of the jury for Bal Lab at BAFICI in 2019 in the works-in-progress selection process. She was also an advisor for the Chilean edition of the Locarno Industry Academy in 2020. She was invited as a guest professor to the EICTV, San Antonio de los Baños Cinema School in Cuba in 2021, the Cátedra de Mercados y Festivales in the Image and Sound program at the University of Buenos Aires, UBA, in 2022, and various universities such as Universidad de Comunicación in México City and FUC (Universidad del Cine de Buenos Aires) in 2022 as well.
  
  In 2023, she was a member of the EFICINE distribution fund (IMCINE – Mexico) and graduated from the Eave Marketing Workshop 2023 in Luxembourg.
  
  She was recently invited to give a masterclass at ESCAC (Escuela Superior de Cine y Audiovisuales de Catalunya) for the Master in Film Business in Barcelona, and she is currently teaching a distribution workshop at the Cineteca Nacional in Mexico.

Midlengths Jury

• Lauren Howes
  
  Lauren Howes (non-binary) was appointed Managing Director of the Doc Institute in June 2023. Howes has more than 20 years of executive not-for-profit management experience. Previous to joining Doc Institute, they were the long serving Executive Director at Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre and Executive Director at Inside Out Festival. Over the past decade, Howes has served the arts community sitting on the boards of the Toronto Arts Council, the Media Arts Network of Ontario, nationally with the Independent Media Arts Alliance, the former Toronto Media Arts Centre (TMAC), and the streaming platform vucavu.com.
• Jane Mote
  
  Jane Mote is an experienced producer and director who supports and trains emerging documentary makers across the world to develop their stories.  She is editorial consultant and a judge for The Whickers, a global fund for first-time documentary makers which has helped realize films such as Hope Frozen, No Simple way Home, Red Herring, and Hollywood Gate.
  
  The former UK MD of Al Gore’s documentary channel Current and Executive Editor of BBC London, Jane has held senior roles at Discovery, Turner Broadcasting, BBC Worldwide, UKTV, and the Africa channel. She has commissioned and exec’d hundreds of hours of TV and feature documentaries.
  
  She has recently been on juries at DMZ Docs, Sunnyside of the Doc, and Miradasdoc. She is co-leading on #DocSafe—an initiative to help safeguard those working in the documentary industry. Her production company beechtobeach trains people to make films on smartphones for the BFI, Women in Film and TV, and other organisations.
  
  Jane was born in Canada but works out of the UK and is a regular industry representative at Hot Docs.
• Paulina Portela
  
  Paulina Portela graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Communications from the Catholic University in Montevideo, Uruguay. She began her career as a film and TV producer in Argentina, Mexico, and Uruguay. For the past 16 years, she has been based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she held positions such as Cinema Coordinator for the Buenos Aires International Independent Cinema, BAFICI, and Senior Production Manager at Viacom International.
  
  In 2010, she founded Compania de Cine, an international distribution company, and sales agency based in Buenos Aires and Montevideo focused on avant-garde and auteur cinema. Films such as Lemebel by Joana Reposi Garibaldi, winner of the Teddy Award in 2019, Night Shot by Carolina Moscoso, awarded the Grand Prix International Competition at FIDMarseille 2020, Camouflage by Jonathan Perrel premiered at Berlinale 2022, Punto de Encuentro, premiered at Hot Docs in 2022, and In the Shadow of Light, premiered at Sheffield 2023 are some of the highlights of their catalogue.
  
  She was a member of the jury for Bal Lab at BAFICI in 2019 in the works-in-progress selection process. She was also an advisor for the Chilean edition of the Locarno Industry Academy in 2020. She was invited as a guest professor to the EICTV, San Antonio de los Baños Cinema School in Cuba in 2021, the Cátedra de Mercados y Festivales in the Image and Sound program at the University of Buenos Aires, UBA, in 2022, and various universities such as Universidad de Comunicación in México City and FUC (Universidad del Cine de Buenos Aires) in 2022 as well.
  
  In 2023, she was a member of the EFICINE distribution fund (IMCINE – Mexico) and graduated from the Eave Marketing Workshop 2023 in Luxembourg.
  
  She was recently invited to give a masterclass at ESCAC (Escuela Superior de Cine y Audiovisuales de Catalunya) for the Master in Film Business in Barcelona, and she is currently teaching a distribution workshop at the Cineteca Nacional in Mexico.

Shorts Jury

• Jacqueline Glover
  
  Jacqueline Glover is currently executive director of Harvard’s Black Film Project. The newly created initiative by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. will support leading and emerging filmmakers focusing on the Black experience. Glover was the former Head of Documentary Programming for Onyx Collective, a new brand for Disney, where she worked with Onyx Collective’s roster of emerging and established creators of colour to produce, acquire and develop non-fiction projects. The first project for Onyx Collective was the Academy Award®-winning documentary Summer of Soul (Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Other Onyx documentary projects included Peabody Award-winner, duPont Award-winner and Emmy® Award-nominated Aftershock, and Critics Choice Documentary Award-winner and Emmy® Award-winner The 1619 Project.  In addition to Onyx collective, Glover was Head of ABC News Documentary Films and Executive Produced the duPont Award-winner Leave No Trace, Murders Before the Marathon, Sound of the Police, The Lady Bird Diaries, and Emmy® Award-nominated Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.
  
  Previously, Glover was senior vice president at HBO Documentary Films, where she was responsible for overseeing all aspects of the department’s programming, including development, acquisitions, and production. Projects included Emmy® Award-winner and Peabody Award-winner True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality, Emmy® Award-winner King in the Wilderness, Emmy® Award-winner Jim: The James Foley Story, Academy Award®-winner Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1, and Spike Lee’s Academy Award®-nominated documentary 4 Little Girls, and his Emmy® Award-winning documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. Glover also produced Unchained Memories: Readings From the Slave Narratives for HBO, which received four Emmy® nominations.
  
  Glover’s projects have received numerous awards, including ten Emmys® and five Oscars®. Glover holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from New York University Tisch School of the Arts and is a member of the documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
• Milton Guillén
  
  Milton Guillén is a visual artist, filmmaker, and the senior programmer for the Camden International Film Festival/Points North Institute. His work explores the cinematic intersections of radical collaborative non-fictions and political dreamscapes. Milton’s films and installations have screened globally at CPH:DOX, Hot Docs, the Venice Biennale, Rooftop, DOK Leipzig, True/False, Dokufest, Camden, and many more. He is currently a FSC-LEF Harvard Fellow and Harris-Henderson Fellow at the University of Vermont.
• Justine Harbonnier
  
  Justine Harbonnier was born in France and grew up in Nantes. After completing a master’s in comparative literature at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), she began making short independent films that screened at a number of international festivals.
  
  Her first self-produced film, Angele, distributed by SPIRA, had its world premiere at New York’s MoMA. She followed that up by working with other production studios on writing and research projects, and by directing the video poem Waste Land, an award-winner at the Festival de la poésie de Montréal. 
  
  Her most recent short, Andrew Keegan is Moving, won the GREC/France TV “Une Minute” award. Distributed by the MEM–Centre des mémoires montréalaises, the film has shown at venues such as FIDMarseille, the RIDM, DOXA, Festival Interférences, the Istanbul International Architecture and Urban Films Festival, and the Pančevo Film Festival.
  
  Harbonnier’s first feature-length film, Caiti Blues, co-produced by Sister Productions (France) and Cinquième Maison (Québec), was selected for Visions du Réel, Hot Docs, and ACID Cannes. A documentary feature, La Simulation, is currently in development with French co-producers Les 48e Rugissants and Special Touch Studios.