Philippe Falardeau’s docuseries Lac-Mégantic — This is Not an Accident has won the Hot Docs Audience Award as the 30th edition of the festival comes to a close.

Produced by Montreal’s Trio Orange, the four-part series (pictured) is directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Falardeau and examines the causes of one of Canada’s worst rail disasters.

Hot Docs’ 2023 awards were announced in a presentation on Saturday (May 6), while the audience awards were announced Monday (May 8) following the closure of the 30th annual festival on Sunday night. The festival handed out $80,000 in cash and prizes in total, according to a news release.

The second-highest audience voted documentary at the festival was the Canadian documentary Someone Lives Here, which won the Rogers Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary, as well as the Bill Nemtin Award for best social impact documentary. The awards come with a cash prize of $50,000 and $10,000, respectively.

The doc, directed by Zack Russell and produced by Matt King and Andrew Ferguson, is about a carpenter in Toronto building “tiny shelters” for the homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic, after he becomes frustrated by what he saw as a lack of care from the city for its unhoused people.

In the best Canadian feature documentary category, Denys Desjardins’ I Lost My Mom picked up the award, which included a $10,000 cash prize. The film sees Desjardins capture the frustrating experience of navigating Quebec’s health-care system to find a long-term care home for his mother.

Caiti Blues from filmmaker Justine Harbonnier picked up the DGC Special Jury Prize for Canadian feature documentaries, with a $5,000 cash prize, for its depiction of an ex-New Yorker living in a remote town in New Mexico, trying to revive her dreams of singing on Broadway.

Hot Docs’ new John Kastner Award, which presents $5,000 to a Canadian Spectrum feature-length doc about courage and compassion that “embodies masterful and audacious storytelling, meticulous observation and a profound trust between the director and the people who share their stories,” was given to Silvicola. From director Jean-Philippe Marquis, the film covers the human impact on forests in Canada’s Pacific Northwest.

The Earl A. Glick Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award, for a Canadian filmmaker who has their first or second feature-length film in competition at the festival, was given to Dominique Chaumont for Veranada. The film offers a look at the lives of Argentinian shepherds in the state of Mendoza. The award comes with a $3,000 cash prize.

Canadian filmmaker Gaëlle Graton received the Lindalee Tracey Award, which honours an emerging Canadian filmmaker with a passionate point of view, strong sense of social justice and a sense of humour. The award comes with a $5,000 cash prize, $5,000 in post-production services from SIM and a hand-blown glass sculpture.

Christian Einshøj’s doc The Mountains picked up the festival’s best international feature documentary award, which comes with a $10,000 cash prize, and automatically qualifies the film for Academy Award consideration in the best documentary feature category. The film utilizes 75,000 photos and 30 years of home videos to tell an autobiographical story of the men in the director’s family.

Einshøj also picked up Hot Docs’ emerging international filmmaker Award, given to an international filmmaker whose first or second feature-length film is in competition at the festival. The award includes a $3,000 cash prize. The Hot Docs jury also acknowledged A Wolfpack Named Ernesto from Mexican director Everardo González with an honorable mention in the international feature category.

The Hot Docs special jury prize in the international feature category was awarded to the U.K. doc Name Me Lawand from director Edward Lovelace. The film is centred on a five-year-old deaf Kurdish refugee, who hones his communication skills after arriving in the U.K., finds community and then faces the threat of deportation. The award includes a $5,000 cash prize.

The Scotiabank Docs For Schools Student Choice Award, which is given to the film that receives the highest rating as determined by a student poll, and comes with a $5,000 cash prize, went to Bethann Hardison and Frédéric Tcheng’s Invisible Beauty. The U.S. doc is about the work of Hardison, a pioneering Black model, and is an exploration of racial diversity in fashion.

In the short film categories, the Iranian film Mrs. Iran’s Husband from Marjan Khosravi received the best international short documentary award and a $3,000 cash prize for its exploration of family and labour in Iran. Last Respects from director Megan Durnford received the Betty Youson Award for best Canadian short documentary, which comes with a $3,000 cash prize. The awards qualify both films for consideration in the Academy Awards’ best documentary short category.

The international category at Hot Docs also gave an honourable mention to Dear Ani from filmmaker Michah Levin.

U.K. doc Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait from director Luke Fowler picked up the best mid-length documentary award, and a $3,000 cash prize. The film is an experimental tribute to the titular Scottish filmmaker. The award’s jury also acknowledged the Thai film Scala from Ananta Thitanat with an honourable mention.

Christine Choy received the 2023 Outstanding Achievement Award, as the documentarian’s work was featured in Hot Docs’ Outstanding Achievement Retrospective Program this year.

A version of this story originally appeared in Realscreen

Image courtesy of Hot Docs