Veteran distributor Jan Rofekamp has been chosen by Hot Docs as the winner of this year’s Doc Mogul award, applauding his decades of work in the business.

‘I’m of course very happy with this,’ Rofekamp told Playback Daily from his Films Transit International headquarters in Montreal. ‘And I think it’s a good thing they celebrate someone from my profession. [Distributors] are the guys behind the scenes who always have to pay for the lunches and never get invited anywhere. We are the workhorses,’ he said, laughing.

Rofekamp has been a distributor since 1982 and has specialized in docs since the early ’90s. Regarding the state of the doc industry today, he says there’s ‘one huge problem.’

‘There’s an insane number of documentaries from everywhere and there’s no way the [global] broadcast market can absorb this, and it’s still the only market that pays any money,’ he says.

Of the approximately 5,000 to 7,000 docs for sale around the world annually, ‘there’s only a place for maybe 300 or 400 of them,’ he says.

Hot Docs will also pay tribute to Tahani Rached with Focus On, an annual program showcasing the work of a mid-career Canadian filmmaker. The Egyptian-born Canuck’s titles include Au chic resto pop, Soraida, A Woman of Palestine and These Girls.

Festival organizers also said this week that U.K. filmmaker Kim Longinotto has won this year’s outstanding achievement award and that Hot Docs will also screen a retrospective of her work. Her rich filmography includes the BAFTA-winning Divorce Iranian Style and her recent Rough Aunties.