A s it marks its third anniversary, Montreal-based documentary platform Tënk has expanded into the English Canada market.

Run by Florence Lamothe, co-director and GM (pictured left), and Naomie Décarie-Daigneault, co-director and artistic director (pictured right), the subscription-based video on demand (SVOD) platform offers contemporary and classic auteur-driven documentaries curated by a diverse list of filmmakers, critics, and programmers.

The not-for-profit platform made its official launch in English Canada on Tuesday (March 21) with more than 40 films on SVOD and 350 films on VOD, including Canadian titles No Ordinary Man (Parabola Films), co-directed by Chase Joynt and Aisling Chin-Yee; writer-director-producer Sophy Romvari’s short Still Processing; and a retrospective of icon Allan King’s best works.

Tënk has streamed more than 850 titles, with nearly 400 of those being Canadian, since its launch in 2020 by a team of enthusiasts and documentary professionals in Quebec, according to a news release.

The platform offers different subscription levels ranging from $10 per month to $100 annually and can be accessed through PC, tablet, smartphone, Apple TV, Android TV. Five films are added to the lineup each week and are available for a two-month window, after which most films remain available for rental at the cost of $3 for 48 hours.

The subscription provides viewers with access to approximately 40 documentaries film festivals including Visions du Réel, Locarno International Film Festival, the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and RIDM (Montreal International Film Festival).

Tënk is also billed as “a solidarity cooperative,” allowing industry members in Canada to “have a role in the strategic decision-making of the organization, while the curation rests in the hands of the programming team,” said the release. The model began in France and was adopted by Lamothe and Décarie-Daigneault for Quebec after they visited the Tënk organization in Lussas, said Lamothe in statement.

“Never has there been a time in which the documentary genre has been more necessary to tell important stories from around the world,” said Décarie-Daigneault, adding that it was “imperative to make these films as accessible as possible to all Canadians.”

Photo courtesy of Touchwood PR