The DOC Institute held its seventh annual DOC Institute Honours Celebration recognizing award-winning filmmaker and activist Michelle Latimer and Canadian industry veteran and Indigenous cinema icon Alanis Obomsawin.

Hosted by Garvia Bailey over Zoom yesterday (Dec. 10), the institute’s event saw over 100 film and documentary industry professionals attend with Latimer presented with the BMO-DOC Vanguard Award, while Obomsawin received the Rogers-DOC Luminary Award.

Awarded to mid-career creatives, the Trickster co-creator/executive producer/director and Inconvenient Indian writer/director joins previous Vanguard winners such as Millefiore Clarkes, Amar Wala, Victoria Lean and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril.

The prize also includes $40,000 in in-kind services from Canadian production supplier SIM International and a $1,000 cash prize from BMO.

“Receiving the Vanguard award is an especially tremendous honour because it comes from my peers – the artists, storytellers and collaborators who inspire me daily and who give me courage to continue on this creative path,” Latimer said in a statement. “Together we’re creating community and hopefully changing the world with our stories. There is nothing to this life if we can’t lift one another up and this award is a beautiful reminder to pay this generosity forward to the next generation of doc-makers with stories to tell.”

For Latimer, this latest win continues the growing amount of recognition she and her two projects have received this year. Notably, Inconvenient Indian picked up the Most Popular Canadian Documentary prize from VIFF; the People’s Choice Documentary Award and the Amplify Voices Award for Best Canadian Feature from TIFF; and the Magnus Isacsson Award from the Montreal International Documentary Festival.

Meanwhile, legendary filmmaker Obomsawin, who directed her first documentary in 1971 and has created more than 50 films with the National Film Board of Canada said: “Thank you for this very special honour, and thank you to the DOC Institute for their incredible efforts to ensure that the documentary world keeps on growing, and that the voices of all nations are heard. In encouraging and supporting documentary filmmakers, they also ensure that the history of our country is front and centre. Once again, I want us to remember that there is freedom in our beautiful country, Canada.”

An initiative of DOC Ontario, the DOC Institute is focused on supporting non-fiction professionals and assists them with learning business skills, honing their craft and making industry connections.