Love in the Time of Fentanyl| DOXA

Love in the Time of Fentanyl, Children of the Mist Win at DOXA

Doc wins Colin Low Award for Best Canadian Director

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Love in the Time of Fentanyl and Children of the Mist top the winners of this year’s DOXA Documentary Festival awards. The films won the awards for Canadian director and documentary feature, respectively, as the festival announced the honours via social media over the weekend.

A Canadian director now living in New York, Colin Askey received the Colin Low Award for Best Canadian Director, presented by the Directors Guild of Canada, for Love in the Time of Fentanyl. Produced by Monika Navarro, Marc Serpa Francoeur and Robinder Uppal in collaboration with ITVS and with support from the Sundance Institute, Love in the Time of Fentanyl had its world premiere at DOXA as part of the festival’s justice forum. The film is an observational portrait of the everyday heroes of Vancouver’s Overdose Prevention Society on the frontlines of the city’s opioid crisis. The DOXA jury called Love in the Time of Fentanyl “a film that depicts an urgent crisis with compassion, empathy and most importantly centers the strength and care of the community of the DTES.” The jury also gave an honourable mention to director Luke Gleeson’s DƏNE YI’INJETL – The Scattering of Man.

On the international front, the jury recognized director Hà Lệ Diễm’s Children of the Mist with the DOXA Feature Documentary Award. The decision was unanimous. The Vietnamese production had its Canadian premiere at the festival and offered a verité study of a twelve-year-old girl whose dreams of going to school are threatened by the normalization of bride-napping in her rural community. “ Intimate, domestic scenes are visceral and haunting, but the film’s explorations of gender, sexuality, and childhood resonate universally, remarked the jury. An honourable mention went to We Don’t Dance for Nothing, directed by Stefanos Tai.

Galb’Echaou, directed by Abdessamad El Montassir, won DOXA’s Short Documentary Award for its portrait of the disputed landscape of the Western Sahara. Spirit Emulson, directed by Siku Allooloo, received an honourable mention. Hello World, meanwhile, won the Nigel Moore Award for Youth Programming. The film directed by Kenneth Elvebakk’s Hello World is an intimate study of queer youths navigating the growing pains of adolescence after coming out.

The 2022 DOXA Documentary Festival returned to theatres this year with a hybrid in-person and virtual event.

Update (May 24, 2022): previous releases did not included Monika Navarro in the list of producers’ credits, and we apologize for the omission.

Pat Mullen is the publisher of POV Magazine. He holds a Master’s in Film Studies from Carleton University where his research focused on adaptation and Canadian cinema. Pat has also contributed to outlets including The Canadian Encyclopedia, Paste, That Shelf, Sharp, Xtra, and Complex. He is the vice president of the Toronto Film Critics Association and an international voter for the Golden Globe Awards.

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