Hot Docs has announced the five Canadian feature-length documentary projects selected to receive a total of CAD 150,000 through the second iteration of Hot Docs Incubator. This program is designed to advance the careers of mid-career Canadian documentary filmmakers, including directors, producers, and editors, who have feature-length projects with strong creative and market potential. The Hot Docs Incubator is generously supported by Netflix as part of the Canadian Storytellers Project.
Hot Docs Incubator participants will receive essential support through project grants, comprehensive training, mentorship, and financial backing. The initiative engages filmmakers in intensive workshops focused on story development, market readiness, and career growth. Attendees at Hot Docs Festival 2025 will have the opportunity to view work-in-progress scenes from these projects, presented to international industry professionals and decision-makers.
“It gives us great pleasure to announce the selection of these five dynamic documentary projects and companies for the second installment of the Hot Docs Incubator,” shared Elizabeth Radshaw, Director of Industry Programs at Hot Docs. “Following the success of our inaugural program, we are thrilled to extend this support to a new slate of remarkable Canadian documentary companies and projects by promising mid-career filmmakers. Over the next eight months, our cohort will embark on a transformative journey for their company development and film story support engaging in intensive training sessions with top-tier mentors and key industry decision-makers. Congratulations to all the selected projects!”
Eligible projects were considered by the Hot Docs Incubator Selection Committee, which included María José Arauz (Industry Programmer, Funds & Labs, Hot Docs), Sara Ben-Saud (Director, Producer, Screenwriter), Robert Y. Chang (Co-Producer, POV), Elizabeth Radshaw (Director, Industry Programs, Hot Docs), and Ann Shin (Executive Producer, Fathom Film Group).
BA'S BOOK
Director: Ashley Duong
Producers: Ina Fichman, Ashley Duong
Production Company: Ba’s Book Productions (Intuitive Pictures, Da-Lê Films)
A father writes a memoir to his daughter about his harrowing experiences of the Vietnam War and the Iranian Revolution. The daughter responds by making a film. Ba’s Book offers a disarming look at the intergenerational legacy of war.
BECOMING A LANDSCAPE
Director: Emily Graves
Producer: Aeyliya Husain
Production Company: November Films Inc.
Visual artist Sarah Gerats confronts the personal impact of climate change through her unique nude selfportraits—in the fastest warming place on earth. Her journey is a reckoning with life: her own, ours, and the planet's.
GAWLO
Director: Aïcha Diop
Producer: Aïcha Diop
Production Company: Studio Tokosel
When filmmaker Aïcha Diop discovers she shares strands of DNA with hundreds of African Americans descended from slavery, she recruits her newly discovered cousin Ciara to join her on a kaleidoscopic and lyrical globe-spanning journey searching for clues into their past. Together they uncover ancestral secrets hidden in the American South, Canada, France and Senegal, crescendoing in a wild and revelatory meeting with Aïcha’s family historians, her Griots, The Guardians of Time.
LAND OF NO PAIN
Director: Émilie Martel
Producers: Émilie Martel, José Guayasamin
Production Company: Kannon Films Inc.
A passionate conservationist races against time to save his endangered primates from inbreeding on an island in the Ecuadorian Amazon while seeking justice against the devastation of an oil spill.
SEGA: THE MUSIC OF THE INDIAN OCEAN
Director: Vincent Toi
Producer: Guillaume Collin
Production Company: Arpent Films Docs Inc.
Sarah Honoré, an emerging musician from Mauritius, seeks to reclaim her Creole identity through the music of her ancestors, Séga, a musical genre anchored in the history of European colonization and slavery.
Photo: Ba's Book film