The 2025 Hot Docs Industry Conference
By Tom White
The 2025 edition of the Hot Docs Industry Conference was decidedly economy-sized, with the parent festival itself having re-emerged from an annus horribilis of organizational turmoil and a consequent period of retrenchment and reassessment. The much-venerated Hot Docs Forum went on hiatus this year, as the festival announced last November, to “refine and enhance future industry offerings while also reimagining the Forum for 2026,” and Hot Docs moved its conference headquarters from Hart House and TIFF Lightbox to the Yorkville Royal Sonesta Hotel.
A less-is-more spirit persisted through the three-day conference in this rebuilding year that still offered attendees a full-fledged smorgasbord of information and provocations. This was all happening amid the Canadian federal election, a de facto repudiation of the ongoing sociopolitical sturm und drang south of the border in Trump’s America.
Meet the Broadcasters
Margje de Koning, the Netherlands-based artistic director of Movies That Matter, moderated this panel, which included two Canadians—Natasha Negrea, head of programming at TVO; and Lucius Dechausay, executive in charge of production at CBC—and two Americans—Chris White, executive producer at the PBS series POV; and Noland Walker, VP of content at ITVS.
With ever-limited prospects for independent documentary, public media is seemingly the final frontier. Two days after this session, President Trump, through his latest in an unrelenting cavalcade of executive orders, took aim at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and its primary beneficiaries, PBS and National Public Radio. At stake: $1.1 billion in funding over the next two years. The U.S. Congress will decide the fate of CPB over the next 45 days.
“It would have a devastating effect on the infrastructure of PBS, as it affects individual stations and markets across the U.S.,” White noted. “The funding is what we’re trying to call ‘back-forward’ funding,” Walker added. “So we’ve been scenario-planning. But our commitment remains to stay firm on our current obligations, and to our mission to bring unrepresented voices to public media.”
With Canadians exhaling in the wake of the previous night’s election, in which the defeated Conservatives had threatened to defund Canada’s public broadcaster CBC, things are a lot more sanguine.
“We’re in an incredibly polarized time,” Negrea admitted. “Some people question the value of public media, and that’s a struggle. We want to make sure that we’re relevant to the people that we serve.”
“We’ve always been committed to telling Canadian stories,” Dechausay maintained. “We have an incredibly diverse, multicultural community. So when I’m thinking about storytelling, I’m thinking about my partners in the Caribbean, on the continent, in South Asia. These are some of the underserved audiences and underserved voices that are right here at home. At CBC, there’s also a huge Indigenous strategy that’s happening, with Indigenous filmmakers telling their own stories.”
The panelists are all working to amplify their respective digital platform strategies, honing in on YouTube and Instagram to host shorter content and clips that will instigate engagement with long-form documentaries beyond broadcast channels. “The goal is to meet audiences where they are and provide content that resonates with their viewing habits and interests,” said Walker.
“For us at TVO, we always take digital rights,” Negrea said. “That includes YouTube geoblocked to Canada, because we know producers need to sell those rights elsewhere. Our website also streams content, and we have our over-the-top TV apps and linear.”
When it comes to pitching for digital scenarios, the panelists offered some strategies, including an understanding of the digital offerings that docs can provide. “Our docs team works really hard to experiment,” Negrea shared. “We will sometimes launch day-and-date broadcast and YouTube, and sometimes we’ll go on YouTube first.”
In Conversation: Andrew Peterson of YouTube
Given the shout-outs to YouTube from the broadcasters session, it was only fitting that Andrew Peterson, head of YouTube Canada, took the stage next for a conversation with CBC’s Takara Small.
Peterson rattled off some impressive stats: Many creators/influencers on the platform command well over a billion views; the YouTube Partner Program contributed $1.8 billion to Canada’s GDP in 2023, while adding 30,000 jobs; and 40% of YouTube Canada’s content has been translated into multiple languages.
“This is not a cottage industry,” Anderson maintained. “People are creating meaningful businesses on the platform and starting to have writers’ rooms, production teams and business teams.”
Asked about where he sees this going, Anderson noted, “The biggest trend is that the world has become multi-format. Audiences expect content not only to be tailored to their interests, but also to the devices they want to watch.”
YouTube is also the leading podcast platform in Canada, and over 17 million Canadians watch the platform on their big screens. And, as Anderson elaborated, YouTube is often the first port-of-entry to long-form content on traditional channels. “We are a really important part of any distribution,” Anderson explained. “The first release window may look a little different, but that’s more like clips and highlights. How do you get people in to feel that discovery?”
Anderson also had direct advice for independent filmmakers learn to master the platform: “Put the story and the audience at the center of everything you do. “Think of yourselves as the full enchilada of producer, distributor, and broadcaster, and be smart around how you segment the markets where you’ve sold your rights first.”
Anderson also pointed out that even a niche can constitute 50 million users. He advised for filmmakers to stand out, define their niche and own it.
Meet the Distributors
Moving on to the distribution realm, producer Hoda Elatawi guided this session with Michael Boyuk of Films We Like, Val Dowd of Submarine Entertainment, Bob Hunter of Icarus Films, and Jason Resnick of Autlook Filmsales. The panelists discussed the headwinds facing the documentary industry, and the importance of connections, collaborations and transparency as keys to navigation.
Autlook Filmsales and Submarine Entertainment are both sales companies whose job is to find distributors for their filmmaker clients, while Films We Like and Icarus Films are small, specialized distribution companies. All four panelists acknowledged a tough market fraught with consolidation and contraction, and all four stressed the importance of establishing a supportive relationship with filmmakers.
“It’s really important for our company to be attending round tables, so we can not only get to know [the filmmaker’s] vision, but also develop a relationship with them,” said Dowd. “Sometimes that dynamic can be a little awkward with filmmakers and agents, because it seems like there is a boundary. So we really try our best to align their goals with ours.”
“In the majority of cases, we are probably more experienced in distribution than the filmmakers,” Resnick added. “We try to work with them to provide various options, and we discuss it collaboratively to figure out the best pathway. We’re there to try to fight for the film, bring in the best options for the film.”
While the box office numbers for documentaries are way below pre-COVID levels, Resnick cited a number of Palestine-Israel-related films, such as the Oscar-winning No Other Land, The Encampments, and October 8 as impressive performers. Resnick also had high hopes for Coexistence, My Ass!, which Autlook is handling. The film screened at Hot Docs, and has picked up a number of awards on the festival circuit.
But while Submarine Entertainment handled three Oscar-nominated docs this year, overall they’re not seeing significant returns on their investments, and have even resorted to a handful of self-releases when they can’t land a distributor.
Boyuk noted the decline in media coverage in Canada and its impact on marketing Films We Like’s slate: The Globe and Mail has just one critic on staff, and the Toronto Star relies on reviewers from Associated Press outside of most major releases. “We rely a lot on the U.S. for their marketing,” he explained. “At one time, you could get a Globe review. It would run, you’d be guaranteed a second week. So this model that once was a model is no longer a model.”
Despite the gloomy prospects, though, the panelists were optimistic. “Patience is key,” Boyuk said. “We’ve had so many films that we sold after a year, after it just seemed like they weren’t going to sell. Sometimes it’s time will come; it could be a year from now, or something in the zeitgeist that shines a spotlight on your film.”
How To Position and Market Your Film
Once you’ve finished your film and readied it for the world beyond the edit room, the real adventure of selling your doc begins. Jon Reiss, a filmmaker-turned-marketing guru, helmed this session, whose participants included Sue Biely, executive director of Story Money Impact; Ally LaMere-Shedden, partner at Route 504 PR; and Christie Boschman, an influencer whose online handle is @ThatDocumentaryGirl.
To kick off the session, Reiss offered his own model for the different systems and structures for film marketing–the PESO model, an acronym for Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned. Story Money Impact fell into the Shared category.
“We really focus on getting films to be used as tools for engagement, awareness, and change,” Biely explained. “We select a few for a period of eight months to do what we call an impact campaign pilot, to identify your strategy and goals, who your partner should be, who could be speakers in different regions to different audiences; and develop your discussion kits, resources, and impact surveys,.”
For the earned market strategy of the PESO model, LaMere-Shedden offered her approach to publicity campaigns: “You want to make sure that you are effectively using earned media. There’s a strategy in terms of releasing reviews and interviews when they’re most effective.”
As an influencer/creator, Boschman touches on all four categories of the PESO model, while disrupting the old media infrastructure. While she acknowledged that she’s not a film critic, she added “Everybody’s on their phone. It’s just the easiest and fastest way to get into people’s heads. Many filmmakers I’ve worked with have told me, ‘I got a million views in the past week because of this video you made.’”
LaMere-Shedden regularly works with influencers. “It’s just a new wave of journalism,” she said. “It looks a little different, but it’s just as effective. Finding a creator who aligns with you is probably the best option. They dedicate their career to learning the algorithms. They have the following. So it’s going to get your movie out there way faster.”
As for Biely and deploying influencers for her impact campaigns, “We’re coming at it with the issue as the centre. Then we start paying for influencers in that space, but it’s not necessarily social media clicks or algorithms. It’s like, ‘How do we get people in a room to have a conversation? Who do they need to know is going to be on the panel?’”
A marketing campaign deploying the PESO model, takes time and money. Reiss quoted a range of $5,000 to $10,000 per month, with impact campaigns ranging from $3,000 to $10,000 per month and influencers charging $1,000-$5,000 per month. “Filmmakers can’t rely on other entities to pay for the release of your film or actually do the release,” he stressed. “You should be budgeting for audience engagement and distribution and marketing.” And given the complexities and stages of a campaign, Reiss continued, filmmakers need to know how windowing strategies work, how each stage of the release sequences and works in relation to each other.
Ethical Use of AI in Documentaries
Since Open AI’s ChatGPT platform entered the marketplace in late 2022, AI has infiltrated the mainstream across numerous sectors, including the creative community. Journalist/educator Ramona Pringle led a discussion with Rachel Antell, co-founder of the Archival Producers Alliance (APA); Kelly Wilhelm, head of the Cultural Policy Hub at OCAD University; and Richard Lachman, director of research & development at The Creative School.
All the panelists stressed the importance of transparency and human discernment in the use of AI, whether in the documentary practice or in crafting a national cultural policy. Wilhelm contended that the process of using AI runs the risk of losing context and replicating bias. “You lose the context in which the original source material exists, which may well provide important elements to your understanding of that source material,” she explained. “And these systems are built with the biases that are already in the materials that are training them.”
“The transparency argument is a huge one,” Lachman noted. “AI is going to continue to accelerate. So I’m interested in projects that are focusing on AI to push the boundaries of understanding what the audience reacts to. We have to see stuff made with AI that pushes on this, because it’s going to be indistinguishable soon.”
One audience member raised a point about the precarity of archives, that by next year, 90% of archives will be AI. Antell added that at a recent conference of archivists, only 5% of attendees at one of the sessions had started the process of authenticating their collections. “These are very under-resourced institutions,” she noted, “They feel like the tech companies created this problem for them.” The APA is working with these archives to create standards for best practices, based on a set of best practice guidelines that APA had helped create for use of generative AI in documentaries.
Wrapping up the session, Lachman addressed the filmmakers in the room, citing a law of technology: “Technology is neither good nor evil, neither is it in control. It depends on your intent. You have a unique point of view. You have unique connections. You have a unique story to tell. Use AI in those ways, because we need to benefit from what your perspective says you should do. Just be transparent about it.”
Truth or Bias: Making Documentaries in the Age of Polarization
The longest session of the conference was arguably the most critical one. In a time when trust in media is alarmingly low and opportunities for funding and releasing documentaries are seriously attenuated, the idea of journalistic integrity is more critical than ever. Journalist Anna Maria Tremonti of CBC led a conversation with Opal Bennett, executive producer at the PBS series POV; Adel Ksiks, manager of programming at Al Jazeera; and Alexandre Marionneau, head of international co-productions at Arte France.
Tremonti challenged the panelists to grapple with the questions of what truth and bias are and how they figure in both the documentary and curatorial practices in a climate of upheaval and polarization.
“If you wanted to divide up truth and fact,” Bennett ventured, “truth would probably live more in that space. It’s about perspective and experience and lens.”
Ksiks emphasized the importance of “telling the untold,” and transmitting what’s happening in reality. “The filmmaker is a part of the film, so he will be biased in his story. He also needs to make sure that he’s presenting the full picture for the audience.”
“Truth has to be linked with fact-checking and sourcing,” Marionneau said. He also highlighted the need to present a balanced view, especially in conflict areas like Ukraine.
Ksiks explained that Al Jazeera considers itself “the voice of the [Global] South,” which encompasses not only the Middle East, but also Africa, Asia, and South America. As such, Al Jazaeera preps its audiences there with informational campaigns prior to airing a film, especially if it might be controversial.
As for navigating this age of polarization, Ksiks aims to strike a balance between “telling the truth and keeping your dream as a filmmaker.” He maintains that he doesn’t experience much pressure from management at Al Jazeera, given that much of what he programs are character-driven documentaries. His programmatic aim is “to understand the society. We need to understand that there is a conflict, but we need to know exactly why.”
“We at POV have always sat in the posture of wanting to curate films that present a plurality of perspectives,” Bennett added.
“At Arte, we’d rather let the dust settle a bit before engaging,” Marionneau noted. “The essence of documentary is taking the time, so we are not rushing. News is not what we do. Time will help us in the end.”
Wrapping up the session, one audience member praised the idea of bias as “a superpower. When you can acknowledge that this is what makes a story resonate, that’s what unites us. Every one of you represents an institution that recognizes that it’s not neutral, that the way you present the film, the way you present the facts, is in itself a bias.”
“We call it curation,” Bennett responded. “It’s an exercise of discretion and taste, and that necessarily is going to involve biases, some operate at levels that we either are reluctant to interrogate or just don’t think to interrogate. It’s part and parcel of self-reflection that the documentary industry has been seeking to do in America.”
Tom White is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor.
Talking Points from the Hot Docs Sessions
By Marc Glassman
Rachel Antell
Throughout the session, Antell referenced the APA document “Working with Archival Producers.”: She emphasized why documentary filmmakers should work with archival producers. To quote the APA’s piece: “Archival Producers…source unique and often never-before-seen materials that can drive the narrative and aesthetics of a project; work to verify the veracity and accuracy of primary source materials; and organize and manage archival assets to ease the editing and rights and clearances processes.”
The session was a primer and a sales pitch. If you didn’t know what an archival producer does, this presentation made it clear to you that for certain projects—mainly historical in nature—it is essential to work with a seasoned professional. Archival producers can save you time and money; they know where to find material—even obscure items—and, more to the point, can help the filmmaker focus on the story they want to present.
Monika Navarro, Firelight Media
Monika Navarro is the director of the William Greaves Production Fund at Firelight Media, an essential organization that provides funding to people of colour to shape and create their visions for social justice and humanistic documentaries. Navarro talked with feeling and sensitivity about the mission of Firelight and its inspiring founders, Stanley Nelson and Marcia Smith.
Navarro pointed out some of Firelight’s successes: working on a series of shorts with PBS involving young filmmakers and being involved with such important films as Tulsa Burning and the Oscar-nominated Attica. She talked about the mission of Firelight: inspiring and educating young filmmakers to create long-form and short docs that express values of social justice and humanism.
Val Dowd, Submarine Entertainment
Submarine Entertainment is one of the most successful documentary sales companies in the world. They’ve won multiple Academy Awards or nominations for works like Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, Sugarcane, Porcelain War, All the Beauty and Bloodshed, and this year’s Hot Docs Audience Award winner Come See Me in the Good Light, which sold to Apple right before the festival.
Dowd’s presentation was realistic—a bit of doom and gloom. The bottom has dropped out of the market. It’s hard to make sales. As a seasoned partner with indies, Submarine Entertainment encouraged attendees to think outside the box. Think about self-distributing on the festival/art house circuit—an example being Secret Mall Apartment, which Submarine self-released [and Films We Like distributed in Canada]. They’re keen on Kanopy and are working more closely with the educational market. International sales agents are important. Any new market is worth pursuing. Dowd tried to be upbeat, but this didn’t seem like a time for optimism.
Marc Glassman is the editor of POV Magazine.
