Thirty-four Canadian produced or co-produced documentaries will be featured at this year’s Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, including the world premieres of 10 Canadian features.

Opening the festival on April 24 is Noam Gonick’s Parade: Queer Acts of Love & Resistance (pictured), produced by the National Film Board of Canada’s (NFB) Justine Pimlott. The documentary, part of Hot Docs Special Presentation program, explores the pivotal moments that catalyzed Canada’s 2SLGBTQI+ movement.

Having its world premiere in the Canadian Spectrum competition is Casas Muertas from Venezuelan-Canadian director Rosana Matecki. The Canada/Venezuela/Ecuador co-production, produced by Matecki along with Mariana and Patricio Andrade, follows five Venezuelans bound by uncertainty amidst a country-wide economic crisis.

Also making its world premiere in the competition is Matt Gallagher’s Shamed , produced by Cornelia Principe for Border City Pictures in association with TVO. The documentary from the Windsor filmmaker follows online Ontario vigilante Jason Nassr – whose methods of exposing alleged child predators led to his 2023 sentencing – along with his targets and their families.

Rounding out the world premieres in the Canadian Spectrum Competition is #skoden, directed and produced by Damien Eagle Bear. The film explores the Indigenous man behind a viral meme, which featured him in a boxing stance. There is also Sinakson Trevor Solway’s Siksikakowan: The Blackfoot Man, produced by the NFB’s Coty Savard. The feature explores what it means to be a Blackfoot man across generations of Siksika Nation men and boys.

Other films taking part in the same competition include Amalie Atkins’ Agatha’s Almanac (Minema Cinema Productions), making its North American premiere following CPH:DOX and Shifting Baselines (GreenGround Productions), also making its North American premiere following Visions du Réel.

Seth and Peter Scriver’s Sundance-premiered Endless Cookie (Scythia Films, Stellar Citizens, Tiger Mister Productions) will make its Canadian premiere alongside Denis Côté’s Berlinale-premiered Paul (Coop Vidéo de Montréal) and Ryan Sidhoo’s The Track, which is making its Canadian premiere following its debut at the True/False Film Festival.

The Track, produced by Sidhoo and supported by SFFILM, the Canada Council for the Arts and Telefilm Canada, follows three friends following Olympic dreams in post-war Bosnia.

Rounding out the Canadian Spectrum competition is Virginia Tangvald’s Ghosts of the Sea (micro_scope, NFB, Urban Factory), making its Ontario premiere. The film joins Tangvald as she searches for clues surrounding her missing brother, who was lost at sea, and dives into her family’s past.

Four more Canadian films are making their world premieres in the Hot Docs Festival World Showcase program including Lena Macdonald’s Betrayal, produced by Macdonald and Noah Bingham. The film, which won the Corus-Hot Docs Forum prize in 2018, follows a whistleblower’s quest to take down Liberian dictator Chris Taylor, his brother-in-law.

Also world premiering in the World Showcase program is Spare My Bones, Coyote! (Nemesis Films) directed by Jonas Malak, also known as Karim Haroun, and produced by Dominique Dussault. The documentary, which has Montreal-based H264 as its distributor and sales agent, follows a family that volunteers to search the U.S.-Mexico border for bodies of migrants to return them to their families.

Rounding out the World Showcase films making their debuts is Hui Wang’s The Gardener and the Dictator, produced by Wang and Jun Zhang, and the 62-minute Aisha’s Story, co-directed by Elizabeth Vibert and Chen Wang and produced by Vibert and Salam Barakat Guenette.

The former has Wang’s grandparents recount their experiences in China over the majority of the last century and the latter follows a woman who, after fleeing the Nakba in 1948, continues to preserve Palestinian culture through a grinding stone she brought with her.

Making its Ontario premiere in the Artscapes program is At All Kosts (Quatre par Quatre Films), which explores a Haitian theatre troupe that looks to engage in politically charged storytelling despite violent instability in the country.

A previously announced Canadian world premiere in the Special Presentations program, produced by the NFB, is The Nest from Chase Joynt and Julietta Singh. The film was announced alongside the Canadian premiere of Patrick Shannon’s Haida basketball doc Saints and Warriors (Grand Scheme Productions, InnoNative).

All of the above films, aside from Aisha’s Story, will also be competing for the Roger’s Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary, which comes with a $50,000 cash prize.

Additionally, The festival will feature the world premieres of Canadian short to mid-length Canadian films including Serville Poblete’s King’s Court (NFB), Stefan Verna’s Night Watches Us (NFB), Quan Luong’s Becoming Ruby and Lulu Wei’s A Stop Gap Measure.

The full lineup for this year’s Hot Docs Festival can be found here.

Hot Docs Festival 2025 runs from April 24 to May 4.

Image courtesy of Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival