Jennifer Holness is the winner of the Don Haig Award at Hot Docs. The festival announced the win today via a release. The Don Haig Award recognizes a veteran producer with a documentary at the festival and a track record for mentoring emerging artists. Hot Docs cited Holness’s work as an executive producer on the festival selection Black Zombie as the motivation for the award. Holness also serves as director and co-executive producer on the festival selection #WhileBlack.
Holness will receive the award at Hot Docs’ closing ceremony this Friday. The honour includes a $5,000 cash prize courtesy of the Don Haig Foundation.
“I am truly honoured to receive this important and impactful award,” Holness said in a statement from Hot Docs. “Documentary filmmakers are scrappy and relentless. We make work in a tough business that is driven by an independent spirt, artistic vision, integrity, passion and fortitude. These are only a few of the adjectives I thought of when I reflected on Don Haig’s legacy. Then when you consider the incredible list of previous award recipients you get a small inkling of how humbled I am to be added to this group. I want to thank the jury who selected me and I want to thank Hot Docs itself for its support of my career. My first professional work in the industry was writing and directing a documentary way back in the day, and then I shifted into the narrative space.
“But in 2019 I followed my creative passion back to directing, and Hot Docs was there, programming my first feature documentary, Subjects of Desire in 2021. This year, it is truly gratifying to have two films at Hot Docs, #WhileBlack that I co-directed and Black Zombie that I am an Executive Producer on. I am so proud that I was able to help a young team helmed by Maya Annik Bedward embarking on her first feature at the start of her professional career. Ironically, I met Maya at Hot Docs years ago when she asked me to be a part of her journey. These connections that Hot Docs facilitates are important and powerful and I am thrilled to receive the recognition the Don Haig Award bestows.”
As a producer, Holness’s credits include Stateless, directed by Michèle Stephenson, about citizenship divides between Haitians and Dominicans. The film won a Special Jury Prize at Hot Docs 2020. Holness also served as executive producer and director the doc series BLK: An Origin Story (2022) chronicling the diverse histories of Black Canadians. The series won five Canadian Screen Awards including Best Direction, Documentary Series for Holness. Her 2021 feature doc Subjects of Desire screened at Hot Docs and was named to Canada’s Top Ten—the only documentary selected that year. Holness also directed with her partner Sudz Sutherland the 2000 mid-length doc Speakers for the Dead about efforts to restore a cemetery amid a larger story of preservation for Black Canadian histories.
For this year’s Hot Docs, Holness’s work with Bedward, who also directed an episode of BLK: An Origin Story, brings the roots of Haitian Vodou to the fore in Black Zombie. The doc considers the ways in which the popular trope of the undead has been appropriated in horror cinema. Meanwhile, #WhileBlack observes the personal toll that citizen journalists experience after live-streaming historic videos that sparked the Black Lives Matter movements. As of press time, both Black Zombie and #WhileBlack are in the top ten for the Hot Docs Audience Award rankings.
Holness also mentors emerging talent on the dramatic side of the industry in both film and television. Most recently, her work on director R.T. Thorne’s horror drama 40 Acres scored a field-leading 10 nominations at the Canadian Screen Awards. She is also a founder of the Black Screen Office, which has helped push for equitable representation in all corners of the screen sector.
Previous recipients of the Don Haig Award include Cornelia Principe, Lalita Krishna, Bob Moore, Peter Raymont, and Ina Fichman.
