HOT DOCS 2026 WRAP – Emma Badame Reports
It’s been a turbulent few years for the organization behind Toronto’s annual Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival, but each spring they still manage to deliver a sure-footed 10-day event filled with a host of must-see features and shorts. The 2026 edition was no exception. And like many recent festivals, this year’s slate gave movie-lovers engaging stories from home and around the world and from both up-and-coming and established filmmakers. Programmers put a real effort into making their line-up diverse–from every viewpoint–and it shows.
From the Hot Docs Persister programme–dedicated to features showcasing voices of strong, inspirational women–to this year’s festival opener, Antidiva: The Carole Pope Confessions, there was certainly no shortage of fare featuring women in-front-of-and-behind the camera. Antidiva, directed by Michelle Mama, profiles the ground-breaking queer lead singer of Rough Trade, who became one of Canada’s first out lesbian performers in the 1980s. Produced by Peaches, the stand-out look-back features famous faces like k.d. Lang, Jann Arden and Refus Wainwright chronicling Pope’s electric effect on the industry and on those who followed in her footsteps.
The 2026 Persister programme was particularly strong this year, with seven films amplifying hugely impactful global tales from seven talented filmmakers. Nance Ackerman’s The Delivery Line brings us the stories of five midwives giving everything to battle climate change, war, poverty, housing crises, and migration, to perform their extraordinary and essential work. Jana Stallein’s Where the Waves Took Her also chronicles the challenges faced by one midwife as she cares for women and children amid the Mediterranean’s humanitarian crossing crisis. Fatna, A Woman Named Rachid, from director Hélène Harder, follows life-long Morrocan activist Fatna El Bouih and examines her life from her forceful disappearance and incarceration in the 1970s to her current impassioned work for gender equality and prisoner justice. Canadian director Katia Café-Fébrissy visits her ancestral homeland of Guadeloupe in INDIVISUM: Legacies Adrift, to unpack the numerous and long-standing family feuds that stem from the islands colonial past.
Zippy Nyaruri’s Truck Mama, examines the amazing lived experience of Kenyan truck driver and single mother Eva–a formidable woman determined to gain economic independence by working long-haul routes on one of East Africa’s most notoriously dangerous highways. Inspired by the story of Anne Frank, the young women in Shakiba Adil and Elina Hirvonen’s inspiring The Secret Reading Club of Kabul form a book club and begin to document their experiences as the Taliban regime continue their oppressive policies on women and girls.
The final film of the 2026 program is an unflinching looks at Ugandan scholar, poet and activist Stella Nyanzi. Patience Nitumwesiga’s The Woman Who Poked The Leopard explores both the strength behind one of the country’s most uniquely vocal dissidents, but also the toll persistence takes–both on a woman and on those around her.
Though not a part of the Persister programme, Brydie O’Connor’s Barbara Forever–a look at the experimental feminist and queer filmmaking of Barbara Hammer–certainly felt like it might have comfortably fit as an eighth entry. As did Mini Kerti’s vibrant documentary, Dona Onete – This Tiny Piece of My Heart. It’s a colourful and meaningful look at the celebrated Queen of Carimbó, who serves as both a late-in-life performer and a custodian of the culture of Brazil’s northern Indigenous riverside communities.
Another big theme at this year’s Hot Docs was technology and its effect on our everyday lives–from human rights to finding someone to love. Impactful entries included a look at the intersection of surveillance and human rights in The Sandbox from first-time director Kenya-Jade Pinto, Love, Apptually (which speaks for itself) from filmmaker Shalini Kantayya, Valerie Veatch’s deep dive into AI, The Ghost in the Machine, Chouwa Liang’s look at digital relationships, Replica, and Sidney Fussell and Jennifer Holness’s #WhileBlack, an urgent doc about the cost of being a digital witness to police brutality as a Black person in the U.S.
Two of this year’s biggest-ticket docs came from Indigenous filmmaker Banchi Hanuse and Malaysian journalist-turned-filmmaker Poh Si Teng. The former’s film Ceremony won the 2026 SXSW Audience Award, and it continued to pack in audiences up north. The film chronicles community broadcaster Nuxalk Radio as it lays out an inquiry into the disappearance of the local ooligan fish and the chilling history of the attempted erasure (and impressive resilience) of the Nuxalk people. The latter’s film, American Doctor, follows three American physicians—Palestinian, Jewish and Zoroastrian—who risk everything to save lives in Gaza, as the literal walls crumble around them.
Other popular titles from women filmmakers tackled female resistance in Iran (A War on Women from Iranian-Canadian filmmaker Raha Shirazi), forced disappearance (My Father and Qaddafi from Jihan K), domestic violence (A Fox Under a Pink Moon from Mehrdad Oskouei and Soraya Akhalaghi), education in the turbulent West Bank (House of Hope from Marjolein Busstra), colonial cultural appropriation (Maya Annik Bedward’s Black Zombie), independant journalist (Steal This Story, Please! From Tia Lessen and Carl Deal), and trans pregnancy and parenthood (Apolo from Isis Broken and Tainá Müller).
As the festival wrapped, female filmmakers also saw their share of accolades at Hot Docs annual awards. #WhileBlack’s co-director, Jennifer Holness, won the prestigious Don Haig Award, which is given annually to an independent Canadian producer “in recognition of their creative vision, entrepreneurship and track record for nurturing emerging talent”. Both Shorts awards–Best Canadian Short and Best International Short–went to female-led films: for My Body Goes to Work (Fernanda Molina) and Replikka (Heloisa Passos with co-director Piratá Waurá), respectively. Banchi Hanuse continued her streak of wins for Ceremony with the Special Jury Prize for Canadian Feature Documentary, while Heidrun Holzfeind won the Jury Prize for International Feature Documentary for The 49th Year–an epistolary look at a Japanese anarchist incarcerated since 1980. The Best International Feature Award went to the previously mentioned House of Hope from Marjolein Busstra, and the Hot Docs Audience Award to Poh Si Teng’s American Doctor.
All in all, it was another impressive year of engaging films for documentary lovers and even the documentary-curious. We can’t wait to see what 2027 has in store for us.
