Toronto’s Hot Docs Film Festival will honour Canadian filmmaker Julia Ivanova with its annual Focus On retrospective at its 2019 edition.

Through the program, Hot Docs will showcase a selection of the Moscow-born director’s documentaries during the festival. Ivanova’s past credits include docs like From Russia, for Love; Fatherhood Dreams; Love Translated; Ash & Oil; and High Five.

In 2011, the filmmaker took home the Hot Docs Best Canadian Feature Film award for her project Family Portrait in Black and White. Produced through her Vancouver-based production banner Interfilm with Boris Ivanov, Family Portrait follows Olga Nenya, a woman who raises 16 orphans in a small Ukrainian town.

In addition, her film Limit Is the Sky recently won Vancouver-based DOXA Documentary Film Festival’s Colin Low Best Canadian Documentary prize. Written and directed by Ivanova, the NFB-produced doc tells the story of six young Canadians who hope to make their livelihoods in Fort McMurray, AB.

Ivanova is also currently working on her latest project, Pipeline in Paradise, a doc on two opposite human forces that are connected by the Trans Mountain Pipeline.

She joins past honourees like John Walker, Maya Gallus, Rosie Dranfield, Carole Laganiere, John Zaritsky, Peter Mettler and more.

Hot Docs also announced that it will showcase recent films from Italy in its Made In program and honour Julia Reichert as its 2019 Outstanding Achievement recipient. The three-time Academy Award nominee will receive a partial retrospective during the fest, will participate in several Q&As and attend a public in-conversation event. Reichert’s docs include Growing Up Female, Union Maids and The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant.

The 26th annual Hot Docs festival runs from April 25 to May 5. Films in the Focus On, Outstanding Achievement Award, and Made In sections will be announced in March.