Canadian documentary Yintah has won the Hot Docs Audience Award as the 31st edition of the festival comes to a close.

The doc, which looks at the Wet’suwet’en First Nation’s fight for sovereignty, also picked up the $50,000 Rogers Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary.

Yintah is co-directed by Jennifer Wickham, Michael Toledano and Brenda Michell and produced by Wickham, Toledano, Michell and EyeSteelFilm’s Bob Moore. Executive producers include EyeSteelFilm co-founders Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin, and Sam Vinal and Doris Rosso.

The Hot Docs audience awards are determined by votes submitted at the end of in-person screenings. Director and producer Tova Krentzman’s Fire Tower (Underwire Films) won the Audience Award for Mid-Length Documentary.

In other categories, director and producer Pablo Álvarez-Mesa’s The Soldier’s Lagoon won the $10,000 Best Canadian Feature Documentary Award, which is supported by Telefilm Canada. The film explores the Páramo region to look at Simón Bolívar’s past and Colombia’s present.

Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee’s Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story won the Directors Guild of Canada Special Jury Prize – Canadian Feature Documentary. The doc, which shines a light on the life and work of Black soul singer Jackie Shane, is produced by Mabbott, Banger Films’ Amanda Burt, Sam Dunn and Scot McFayden and National Film Board of Canada’s Justine Pimlott. The award is sponsored by DGC and DGC Ontario and comes with a $5,000 cash prize.

The Lindalee Tracey Award, which recognizes an emerging Canadian filmmaker with a strong sense of social justice, was won by Meysam Motazedi. The award comes with a $5,000 cash prize from the Lindalee Tracey Fund, a $5,000 in-kind voucher from Picture Shop for equipment rentals and services, and a sculpture by Canadian glass artist Andrew Kuntz.

Laurence Lévesque’s Okurimono won the $3,000 Earl A. Glick Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award. The film is produced by Rosalie Chicoine-Perreault and Catherine Boily. The Earl A. Glick award is given to a Canadian filmmaker with their debut or second feature-length film in competition.

Writer-director Eisha Marjara’s Am I the Skinniest Person You’ve Ever Seen? won the Betty Youson Award for Best Canadian Short Documentary. The film is produced by Joe Balass and Ariel Nasr. The Betty Youson Award comes with a $3,000 cash prize courtesy of John and Betty Youson.

A total of $172,000 in cash prizes were awarded to films and pitch projects at this year’s Hot Docs festival.

Photo by Amber Bracken