Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is pleased to announce the selection of 15 Canadian projects from four provinces to receive $300,000 CAD in development and production grants from the CrossCurrents Canada Doc Fund. The Fund, established with the generous support of Netflix, was launched during the 2018 Hot Docs Festival and supports short and feature-length documentaries from emerging and sophomore Canadian filmmakers who are Indigenous, Francophone, Deaf and/or have a disability, racialized and/or persons of colour, promoting a more vibrant, representative and sustainable industry.
"The fifth year of the CrossCurrents Canada Doc Fund is our most momentous yet and we're thrilled to be able to support such a rich and diverse array of projects," said Heidi Tao Yang, Hot Docs Director of Funds & Labs. "The 15 selected grantees reflect the wealth of emerging talent in Canada’s documentary industry, with projects that span the deeply personal to the urgently political and occasionally merge the two. Formally, this crop of grantees is just as varied, with styles ranging from the journalistic to the experimental and a great deal in-between."
"The filmmakers and projects announced as recipients of the CrossCurrents Canada Doc Fund represent the richness of the Canadian non-fiction community," added Sarafina DiFelice, Documentary Film at Netflix. "The selected documentaries encourage learning, foster discovery, in addition to igniting curiosity and conversation."
The Fund is a cornerstone of the Hot Docs Canadian Storytellers Project, generously supported by Netflix, a five-year initiative meant to address systemic barriers and opportunity gaps that exist within the documentary film community.
For their partnership on the Project, Hot Docs and Netflix received the 2021 Business / Arts Community Impact Award. The CrossCurrents Canada Doc Fund has disbursed $1,000,000 CAD over five years to 48 projects from five provinces as it aims to foster original storytelling from creators with unique vantage points.
Twenty-five shortlisted projects were considered by the CrossCurrents Canada Doc Fund Selection Committee: Michelle McCree, (Executive in charge of production, The Passionate Eye, CBC), Gordon Loverin (Producer, Knowledge Network), Hot Docs Industry (Julian Carrington, Distribution Manager & Industry Funds Programmer).
Development Funding
HOME OF THE FLYING MOONS
Director/Producer: Victoria Catherine Chan
Production company: Independent
Within the intimate layers of a patriarchal Chinese clan, Victoria’s choice to build a family with unusual means goes beyond all she has ever dared to explore.
JUJU
Director: Tobi Abdul
Producers: Tobi Abdul, Michelle Mama, Stephanie Hooker
Production company: Little Andro Media
A vivid peek into the spiritual ceremonies of three practitioners who—in spite of taboo—continue to seek healing, community and joy in their ancestral traditions and mesmerizing rituals that feed curiosities and challenge assumptions.
LOS GUADALES
Director: Bryan Angarita
Producers: Bryan Angarita, Marc Serpa Francoeur (Consulting Producer)
Production company: Independent
Los Guaduales is a poetic exploration of character and setting set against the backdrop of Colombia’s haunting bamboo forests. Through brief, intimate encounters a bamboo logger swept amidst Colombia’s Venezuelan refugee crisis reflects on relationships to family, home, and the immigrant experience.
MOUTH OF A SHARK, BARREL OF A GUN
Director/Producer: Roble Issa
Production company: Independent
After receiving vacate orders from Canada Border Services Agency for providing fraudulent documents, a group of Somali refugees band together and attempt to overturn CBSA’s decision before they are deported back to Somalia.
MINERAL SPORT (SPORT MINÉRAL)
Director: Laurence Olivier
Producers: Laurence Olivier
Line Producers: Mylène Corbeil & Estelle Champoux
Production company: André & Nicole Productions
Three women, facing an imposing boulder, practice a strange choreography; two others are bandaging their bloody fingertips; one is holding up a construction fan. What is the purpose of this mysterious alpine ballet? Mineral Sport, experimental documentary, celebrates women boulderers.
SUMAYA'S JOURNEY
Director/Producer: Annie Sakkab
Production company: B707 Productions Inc.
Sumaya’s Journey is a 25-minute documentary that follows the struggles, challenges, and inequity in the daily life of Sumaya, a 30-year-old Sudanese refugee woman now living in asylum in Amman, Jordan.
WHOSE CITY
Director: Javier Lovera
Producer: Ina Finchman
Production company: Intuitive Pictures
Tech companies partnering with city governments promise an urban utopia, but their sensors and algorithms are becoming tools for oppression and mass surveillance. Now, community leaders from some of North America’s largest cities are fighting back against these powerful partnerships to reclaim their democratic power and secure their city’s future.
Production Funds
COLD DIP
Director/Producer: Amy Mielke & Brittney Gavin
Production company: A + B Roll Films
A veteran and artist practices cold dipping as a way to heal physical and emotional trauma from a life no one ever expected her to pursue.
CON NHANG I INCENSE CHILDREN
Director: Eva-Loan Ponton-Pham
Producer: Marie-Michèle Cyr
Production company: Parabola Films
Con Nhang – Incense Children is an intimate look at a Vietnamese family separated by the war. The daughter of a "boat-people" refugee arranges a family reunion in Vietnam under the benevolent gaze of her aunt Quang, an enigmatic medium.
THE GARDENER & THE DICTATOR
Director/Producer: Hui Wang
Executive Producer: Marc Serpa Francoeur
Production company: Redbean Productions
A meditative portrait of a remarkable elderly Chinese couple in their final years, The Gardener & The Dictator interweaves intimate moments and struggles from daily life with both joyous and painful memories from the last century of China’s tumultuous history.
NECHAKO
Director: Lyana Patrick
Producers: Jessica Hallenbeck, Tyler Hagan, Nilesh Patel
Production company: Nechako Films Inc.
In the wake of the damming of the Nechako River and a looming court decision, two communities form an unlikely alliance to rebuild their Nations.
THE SPIRIT WHO SWIMS
Director: Bev Sellars
Producer: Gary Tutte
Production company: Moccasin Footprint Society
A warning shot and an epic journey up and down the Fraser River, told directly by the voice of the Salmon (The Spirit Who Swims), as its annual migration connects urgent stories of indigenous voices in communities along the river.
WARRIOR SPIRIT (Working Title)
Directors: Swaysən Will George, Gloria Pancrazi
Producers: Swaysən Will George, Gloria Pancrazi, Andrew Luba, Nicholas Castel
Production company: 1375964 BC LTD
An Indigenous land defender facing prison-time turns to a sacred tradition–the ceremonial canoe journey–to heal and unite his communities against environmental and cultural peril. He’s willing to do anything to stand up for all life around him.
WE WILL BE BRAVE
Director: Chrisann Hessing
Producer: Tanya Hoshi
Production company: 2744985 Ontario Inc.
We Will Be Brave follows the inspiring journeys of a group of racialized men in Toronto who are on a mission to dismantle toxic masculinity in their communities, using art to create radically-loving alternatives to shame and punishment.
THE WIND'S THIRST
Director/Producer: Alejandro Valbuena
Production company: Curare Films
This poetic documentary explores the struggle of the Wayuu people and their resistance against an ongoing yet undisclosed genocide. Three indigenous women—Minta, Ana and Monica—fight a systemic siege organized by massive coal mining, extreme evangelicals, paramilitary violence, and government neglect.