#Hot Docs
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Laura Ángel Córdoba – “Ernesto, Gracias”
Laura Ángel Córdoba was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and migrated to Costa Rica. She has participated in over 30 documentary projects focusing on a wide variety of topics in Costa Rica, Panama,...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Kathryn Ferguson – “Nothing Compares”
Belfast-born Kathryn Ferguson is an award-winning director whose innovative and boundary-pushing documentary work has screened globally. She was nominated for the Grand Prix award at Clermont-Ferrand...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Patty Ivins Specht – “Deconstructing Karen”
Patty Ivins Specht is an Emmy award winning producer, director, and writer who has made several documentaries about womanhood, including “Hungry,” “Mean Girls: Mind Games,”...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Bogna Kowalczyk – “Boylesque”
Bogna Kowalczyk currently works as a creative art director, director, and animator at Warsaw Production. Since 2009 she has been directing animated films and music videos and has supported dozens of...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Pauline Beugnies – “The End of Innocence” (“Petites”)
Pauline Beugnies is an author, photographer, and director from Belgium. For 10 years, she has been documenting the emancipation of youth in Egypt in multiple forms: photo exhibitions, 2012 web...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Pilar Moreno & Ana Endara – “For Your Peace of Mind, Make Your Own Museum”
Pilar Moreno is a visual artist from Spain and based in Panama, whose art projects address social and political issues. Her previous credits include documentaries “Reinas” — which...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Zaynê Akyol – “Rojek”
Zaynê Akyol’s first feature documentary, “Gulîstan, Land of Roses,” was selected by 80 international film festivals, earning 50 nominations and winning 12 awards, including the...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Lina Rodriguez – “Mis Dos Voces” (“My Two Voices”)
Colombian/Canadian filmmaker Lina Rodriguez is the writer-director of narrative features “Señoritas” and “This Time Tomorrow,” which have been showcased in festivals and...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Hanna Polak – “Angels of Sinjar”
A producer, director, and cinematographer, Polish filmmaker Hanna Polak received an Academy Award and a News and Documentary Emmy nomination for the documentary short “The Children of...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Phyllis Ellis – “Category: Woman”
Phyllis Ellis is a Canadian filmmaker, writer, actor, and producer who has worked in Europe, Asia, Africa, India, and the U.S. for the past 35 years. Nominated for the 2021 International Emmys and...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Jacquelyn Mills – “Geographies of Solitude”
Jacquelyn Mills is an award-winning filmmaker from Cape Breton Island and based in Montreal. Her film “In the Waves” premiered at Visions du Réel and was theatrically released at...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Laura Faerman and Marina Weis – “The Wind Blows the Border”
Laura Faerman has been working as a documentarist, researcher, and curator for the past 20 years. In 2014 Faerman worked as an audiovisual researcher at the Indigenous National Truth Commission,...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Noura Kevorkian – “Batata”
Noura Kevorkian is a Syrian-Lebanese filmmaker who made her filmmaking debut with her first short documentary ” Veils Uncovered” (Official Competition, Amsterdam IDFA) about lingerie and...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Chloe Sosa-Sims – “Hunting in Packs”
Chloe Sosa-Sims is a Toronto-based director, producer, and writer. Her feature debut, “Dan and Margot,” illuminated the complicated truths of schizophrenia. Sosa-Sims has participated in...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Olha Zhurba – “Outside”
Olha Zhurba is a Ukrainian filmmaker whose first short fiction film ,”Dad’s Sneakers,” premiered in the short competition at Locarno Film Festival 2021 and won Best Ukrainian Short...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Jackie Torrens – “Bernie Langille Wants To Know What Happened To Bernie Langille”
Jackie Torrens is an actor, writer, and documentary filmmaker. In 2012, she co-founded Peep Media with producer Jessica Brown, and since then they have completed four television documentaries for the...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Jasmín Mara López – “Silent Beauty”
Jasmín Mara López is a journalist, audio producer, and documentary filmmaker living between Los Angeles and New Orleans. Born in the U.S. with familial roots in México, her childhood was affected...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Stacey Tenenbaum – “Scrap”
Stacey Tenenbaum is an award-winning producer and director. In 2014 she founded H2L Productions, a boutique documentary film production company specializing in crafting international character-driven...
Trailer Watch: Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers Explores the Opioid Crisis in “Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy”
“We can’t sit back and expect things to change without doing the work,” we’re told in a trailer for “Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy.” Currently screening...
Exclusive: Mental Health & the Criminal Justice System Collide in Trailer for Hot Docs’ “Any Given Day”
“When half the mental health clinics in Chicago closed, the jail population exploded,” director Margaret Byrne informs us in an exclusive trailer for “Any Given Day,” her...
Hot Docs Reveals 2021 Lineup, 50 Percent of Directors in the Program Are Women
Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival has announced its 2021 lineup. Featuring 219 films from 66 countries, the program was culled from 2,300 submissions. Fifty percent of the...
Trailer Watch: Abortion Rights Activists in Ireland Fight to Repeal “The 8th”
Two years ago, Ireland voted to repeal the 8th amendment, the 1983 law that granted fetuses the same right to life as their mothers, in a historic referendum. Now Maeve O’Boyle, Lucy Kennedy, and...
Hot Docs Shorts Spotlight: Projects Featuring Protests, Aquaculture Magicians, & More
Women and Hollywood has already spotlighted some of our most anticipated women-driven and -directed features at Hot Docs in our preview, and now we’re turning our attention to the fest’s...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Ali Weinstein – “#BLESSED”
Ali Weinstein is a documentary director and producer based in Toronto. Her directorial debut “Mermaids,” about a group of women who strongly identify with the powerful aquatic archetype,...
Hot Docs Announces 2020 Program, 51 Percent of Directors Are Women
Originally slated to take place April 30-May 10 in Toronto, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The fest is still looking for ways to...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Laurence Mathieu-Leger – “Willie”
Laurence Mathieu-Leger is an award-winning filmmaker, editor, and producer. She specializes in documentary projects and has done work for The Guardian, Reuters, La Presse, Cosmo, and the United...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Rama Rau – “The Daughter Tree”
Rama Rau is a writer-director. Rau’s debut fiction feature, “Honey Bee,” won the EDA Best Film Award at the Whistler Film Festival. Her film “League of Exotique Dancers”...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Baljit Sangra – “Because We Are Girls”
Baljit Sangra uses documentary and factual entertainment to explore social and cross-cultural issues. A three-time Leo Award nominee, Sangra’s films have premiered at festivals around the world....
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Pachi Bustos – “Haydee and the Flying Fish”
Pachi Bustos is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. She has worked as a director, writer, and researcher for prestigious Chilean television programs and nationally and internationally renowned...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Tülin Özdemir – “Red Moon”
Tülin Özdemir’s work asks the question, “Who is today’s modern woman?” The filmmaker made her first short documentary, “Our Wedding,” in 2008 and expanded on its...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Phyllis Ellis – “Toxic Beauty”
Phyllis Ellis is a creator, writer, director, producer, and performer in factual and scripted television and film. She was honored at the 2013 Canadian Screen Awards with the prestigious Donald...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Jola Dylewska – “Marek Edelman… and There Was Love in the Ghetto”
Jola Dylewska is a Polish writer, director, and cinematographer. She has worked as a cinematographer on over 25 projects. She won Best Cinematography at the 2012 Polish Film Awards for her work on...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Claudia Sparrow – “Maxima”
Claudia Sparrow was born and raised in Lima, Peru. Her first feature, “I Remember You,” won best dramatic feature film at the Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles and was released...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Emily Gan – “Cavebirds”
Emily Gan is a Chinese-Canadian photographer, filmmaker, and video artist born and based in Montréal. Gan has travelled across Canada, the US, India, and Malaysia working on various independent...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Aude Leroux-Lévesque – “A Place of Tide and Time”
Aude Leroux-Lévesque is a Montreal-based documentary filmmaker. Her first documentary, “Call me Salma,” aired on Arte, EBS Korea, Direct 8, and played in numerous international film...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Danielle Sturk – “El Toro”
Danielle Sturk is a bilingual multi-disciplinary artist. Sturk’s films have screened at over 30 film festivals, and have been broadcast on most major Canadian English and French networks, such...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Nance Ackerman, Ariella Pahlke, and Teresa MacInnes – “Conviction”
Nance Ackerman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, and multimedia artist. Her films have won awards for direction and cinematography. Her credits include “Cottonland,” “Four...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Marcela Arteaga – “The Guardian of Memory”
Marcela Arteaga is a Mexican writer and director. Her 2003 documentary “Remembrance” was screened at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the Festival des Films du Monde, and Hot Docs,...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Shannon Walsh – “Illusions of Control”
Shannon Walsh has written and directed four award-winning feature documentaries, as well as multiple shorts and 360 VR projects. Her work has been released theatrically in Canada, the UK, and South...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Megan Wennberg – “Drag Kids”
Megan Wennberg is a writer and director based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. She works in both documentary and fiction, and her work has screened at festivals around the world and been broadcast on CBC,...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Nicole Schafer – “Buddha in Africa”
Nicole Schafer is a South African director. She produced award-winning stories for the Reuters pan-African magazine show “Africa Journal.” Her thesis film from the University of Cape...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Pailin Wedel – “Hope Frozen”
Pailin Wedel is a Thai-American journalist and filmmaker who grew up in Asia. She has regularly produced documentary programs for Al Jazeera English, namely for its current events program “101...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Karen Stokkendal Poulsen – “On the Inside of a Military Dictatorship”
Karen Stokkendal Poulsen is a writer and director with a background in foreign affairs and political science. Her 2014 documentary “The Agreement” was nominated for Best Nordic Documentary at the...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Martha Kehoe and Joan Tosoni – “Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind”
Martha Kehoe is a writer, producer, and director who has worked on and created award-winning documentaries, series, and specials in multiple genres. Her early career focused on music, as she...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Marwa Zein – “Khartoum Offside”
Marwa Zein is a Sudanese film director and producer. Her graduation project, “A game,” was an official selection of more than 30 international festivals worldwide and was translated into five...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Maya Newell – “In My Blood It Runs”
Maya Newell is an award-winning Australian filmmaker with a focus on social impact documentary. Her credits include short docs “Two”and “Growing Up Gayby,” as well as the...
Hot Docs 2019 Women Directors: Meet Tasha Hubbard – “nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up”
Dr. Tasha Hubbard is a writer, filmmaker, and associate professor at the University of Alberta. Her first solo writing/directing project, “Two Worlds Colliding,” premiered at imagineNATIVE in...
Hot Docs Announces Full Lineup, Tasha Hubbard’s “nîpawistamâsowin” to Open the Fest
Hot Docs has unveiled the full lineup for its 2019 edition and it’s set to be an exciting one for women filmmakers. According to a press release, the festival will present 234 films and...
Hot Docs Adds “One Child Nation,” “I Love You, Now Die,” & More to Special Presentations Lineup
Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival has added more titles to its Special Presentations lineup, described as “a high-profile collection of world and international premieres, award...
Hot Docs 2019’s Special Presentations Lineup Is Nearly 50 Percent Women-Directed
Hot Docs has announced the 15 features comprising this year’s Special Presentations program. Seven of the titles are directed by women, or 47 percent of the slate, which is described as...