The U.S. documentary project Arrest the Midwife (w/t) took the top honour at the 2024 Hot Docs Forum pitch contest, receiving a $20,000 cash prize.

The flagship industry event of the Hot Docs festival, the Forum is an annual international co-financing market for documentary projects. The 2024 edition took place on April 30 and May 1, and featured a total of 20 projects from 22 filmmakers — 11 of whom are BIPOC and 16 of whom are women — representing 18 countries. The projects were pitched to a group of key funders and decision-makers as well as filmmakers, producers and other observers, with more than $47,000 awarded in prizes.

First-place prize-winner Arrest the Midwife from Underdog Films follows the story of three midwives serving Amish and Mennonite communities whose arrest spurs an unlikely group of activists to join the fight for reproductive rights. The doc is directed and produced by Elaine Epstein, with Robin Hessman and Ruth Ann Harnisch also producing.

The second-place prize of $10,000 was awarded to Autumn of the Patriarch, which explores the survival strategies of people living inside the modern Russian dictatorship. The doc is a coproduction between Piraya Film (Norway), Little Big Story (France), IV Films (Finland) and Nukleus Film (Croatia), with Anna Bogoliubova directing. The producers are Torstein Grude Ruwê Yuxinawá, Oddleiv Vik, Raphael Pëlissou, Valérie Montmartin, Iikka Vehkalahti and Sinisa Juricic.

The third prize of $5,000 went to Under the Flags, the Sun, a Paraguay-Argentina coproduction from Cine Mio, MaravillaCine S.R.L. and Sabaté Films S.R.L. Directed by Juanjo Pereira and produced by Paula Zyngierman, Ivana Urízar, Gabriela Sabaté, Leandro Listorti and Juanjo Pereira, the film employs material found around the world to delve into the history of Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner’s regime.

The CMF-Hot Docs Forum Canadian Pitch Prize of CAD$10,000, awarded to the best Canadian pitch, went to This Land of Ours, from Oya Media Group. The film is directed and produced by Ngardy Conteh George and produced by Alison Duke, the latter of whom is being honoured at Hot Docs with the Don Haig Award on May 3.

Finally, the Cuban Hat Award, which offers “real cash, no strings attached” and goes to the best pitch as selected by Forum attendees, went to the U.S. doc Anatomy of a Life, from director Emma Francis-Snyder and producer Tiffany Fisher Love. The hybrid film explores the end of life as imagined by the dying and experienced by the ones they leave behind.

This story originally appeared in Realscreen