Boards & Staff

Sylvia D. Hamilton is an award-winning Nova Scotian filmmaker and writer known for the documentaries Portia White: Think on Me, The Little Black School House and Black Mother Black Daughter, among others. She is the author of the poetry collection And I Alone Escaped to Tell You, a finalist for the Nova Scotia Masterworks Award and the 2015 League of Canadian Poets Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her new collection titled Tender was released in October 2022. Hamilton’s multi-media installations have shown at the Royal Ontario Museum, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Dalhousie Art Gallery, among other venues. She received the 2019 Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media and the 2021 Luminary Award given by the Documentary Organization of Canada’s Doc Institute. For many years she taught documentary survey and production courses in the Journalism School of the University of King’s College in Halifax where she is now an Inglis Professor Emeritus.

Chris McDonald was appointed president of Hot Docs in 2014. Prior to that, he served as the organizations executive director since 1998. A native of Montreal, Chris holds a degree in Film Studies from McGill University. Prior to Hot Docs, for five years Chris was development director at the prestigious Canadian Film Centre for Advanced Film, TV and New Media Training, founded by director Norman Jewison. Before working at the CFC, Chris worked for two national environmental organizations. He serves on several industry advisory boards, and has served on panels and juries at leading festivals around the world.

Heather Haynes is a Senior International Programmer at Hot Docs. She serves on numerous film juries and work in progress labs for festivals across Mexico, Central and South America and has served, for several years, as a reader for Chicken & Egg’s (Egg)celerator Labs. She was an International Programmer for fiction and documentary at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Festival, guest programmer for AluCine and has co-written and produced three award winning documentaries. In addition to her film work, Heather is creator of Culture Storm, was co-founding collective member and producer of Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto, Founder and Artistic Director of Toronto Free Gallery and publisher of Fuse Magazine. She is currently in production on a feature film with director and artist Dana Claxton and Jeneen Frei Njootli.
 

Alex Rogalski is the Senior Canadian programmer for Hot Docs and has been working with the festival since 2010. His programming career has focused on documentary and Canadian cinema for festivals across the country including TIFF, Calgary International Film Festival, Human Rights Watch, Victoria Film Festival,Gimme Some Truth and others. He holds a Masters in Communication and Culture, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film and has written for publications including POV magazine.

Aisha Jamal started programming at small, community-based festivals. She has been working as Canadian Programmer at Hot Docs since 2016. In 2019, she worked as Programming Associate for Canadian and Nordic features at TIFF and for four years she was Head of Programming at the Syria Film Festival. She also teaches film theory and criticism while working on her own film projects.  
 

Angie Driscoll brings over two decades of film programming expertise to her work as Senior International Programmer and Senior Shorts Programmer at Hot Docs. She has selected films for a variety of international film festivals including the Sundance Film Festival, Aspen Shortsfest, the Athena Film Festival and Nordisk Panorama, and closer to home, for the Toronto International Film Festival, the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival and the Toronto Urban Film Festival. She has curated films online for BBC LongShots and Babelgum, consulted for Reel Canada, Storybolt and Midtnorsk Filmsenter. She currently works with Palm Springs ShortFest, the New York Times’ Op-Docs and Minimalen Kortfilmfestival to bring more documentaries and short films to larger audiences online and IRL.

Samah Ali is a distributor and film programmer based in Toronto and New York City. A lover of documentaries and virtual reality, she programs for Academy Award qualifying festivals Hot Docs Film Festival, DOC NYC, and Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. She is also the founder of Sisterhood Media, a production and distribution company streaming films on their platform, Sisterhood Media TV. You can interact with her on Twitter @sistersamah.

Selina Star Crammond is a film programmer and cultural worker based in Vancouver, BC on the unceded xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Selílwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) territories. She has been involved with the BC documentary film community for over 10 years, most notably through her role as Director of Programming at DOXA Documentary Film Festival from 2017-2021. Over the years she has developed an affinity for hybrid, experimental and participatory film, global Indigenous cinema, as well as documentaries from Eastern Europe and the Nordic regions. She is particularly interested in subject matter that explores the nuances of labour, non-human life, and modern social institutions. Currently, Selina is pursuing a graduate degree in Liberal Studies at Simon Fraser University.

With 20+ years of experience in the documentary field, Lucila Moctezuma is a consultant for independent filmmakers and media organizations in the US and internationally, with a special consulting focus on story, creative authorship, and program design. Until recently, she was Program Director at Chicken & Egg Pictures where she oversaw the design and implementation of the organization’s programs. Previous roles include Executive Producing Director at UnionDocs, Production Assistance Program Manager at Women Make Movies, founding Director of TFI Latin America Fund, Director of The Rockefeller Foundation’s Media Arts Fellowships, and Vice-President of The Flaherty’s Board of Trustees. She collaborates with the Morelia International Film Festival as part of the documentary programming committee. Lucila is a frequent guest participant at film forums, panels and juries. In 2021 she became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Documentary Branch.

Gabor Pertic attended the University of Toronto as a Specialist in Cinema Studies, graduating with an Honours BA. After working as a film critic in Toronto, he transitioned into the world of film festival programming. For several years, he worked in the programming department of the Toronto International Film Festival. In addition to TIFF, Gabor was Executive Director of the Breakthroughs Film Festival and Documentary programmer for the Reykjavik International Film Festival. For the majority of his career, Gabor worked for North America’s largest Documentary-exclusive film festival Hot Docs, in the roles of Senior Programming Coordinator and International Programmer. He returns this year to the International Programming team.

Vivian Belik is a documentary producer, programmer and arts administrator who has curated and juried works for regional film festivals across Canada including the Available Light Film Festival, National Screen Institute and Gimli Film Festival. She currently works at TIFF and is a graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Documentary Media Program.

Sarah-Tai Black is a​ ​film programmer and critic living in Toronto. Their work centers on visual media and art-making with an emphasis on Black, queer, trans, and ​disabled ​futures. They regularly contribute ​film ​criticism to The Los Angeles Times and The Globe and Mail and currently work as International Programmer, Mid-Lengths at Hot Docs International Film Festival and Festival & Industry Programmer at Vancouver Queer Film Festival.
​Sarah-Tai's work has appeared on platforms such as Berlinale Forum, MUBI Notebook, Cinema Scope, Variety, Harper's Bazaar, and Refinery 29. ​​They ​recently appeared as a co-host of Netflix Film’s YouTube series Black Film School​ and they have worked ​as a part of the TIFF, Tribeca Film Festival, and True/False Film Festival programming team​s​. In 2021 they​ were a Curatorial Fellow at the Flaherty Film Seminar.

Jesse Cumming is a curator, writer, editor, and researcher. He has worked with the Toronto International Film Festival, the Berlinale Forum, and Open City Documentary Festival, and has curated, co-curated, and presented programs with The Museum of Modern Art, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and Anthology Film Archives, among other venues. His writing has appeared in Cinema Scope, MUBI Notebook, Hyperallergic, and more. He is currently a Media Lecturer with Toronto Metropolitan University’s Cairo Campus.

Eileen Arandiga is a film programmer and curator who has a special interest in short film. Eileen has worked for a number of festivals including Hot Docs and TIFF, she was the Festival Director of the Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto for six years. Eileen holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Australia.