Rogers Audience Award at Hot Docs Online
by Staff
(May 12, 2020 – Toronto, ON) Hot Docs has announced that the Rogers Audience Award and accompanying cash prizes totalling $50,000 CDN, courtesy of Rogers Group of Funds, will be presented at this year’s Hot Docs Festival Online, May 28-June 6. Introduced at the 2017 Hot Docs Festival, the Award and cash prize have traditionally been given to the Canadian feature documentary screened at the Hot Docs Festival that receives the highest average rating as determined by audience poll. This year, the Award will honour the top five Canadian documentaries in the audience poll and will present each director with a cash prize of $10,000 CDN.
Our change in approach this year is to support more of Canada’s outstanding documentary filmmakers during this challenging time for the entire artistic community and our homegrown production industry,” said Robin Mirsky, Executive Director, Rogers Group of Funds. “Canada has a long and successful history in producing outstanding documentaries that have the power to strengthen our culture, change perspectives, and drive social change. The Rogers Group of Funds is proud to continue its partnership with Hot Docs Festival and recognize the terrific work by these filmmakers.”
“Rogers Group of Funds has been a long-time supporter of Hot Docs and also an outstanding champion of Canada’s documentary community, and we cannot thank them enough for their generosity,” said Brett Hendrie, Executive Director of Hot Docs. “We’re thrilled to be able to partner with them to celebrate and honour the creative work of Canadian filmmakers with this Award, especially in these uncertain times.”
Feature-length documentaries screening as part of Hot Docs Festival Online that have a Canadian director and are CAVCO certified will be eligible for the Rogers Audience Award. Online voting will take place during the Festival, May 28 – June 6, with electronic ballots being available to audience members who stream the eligible films. One ballot per stream will be issued. Ballots will be tallied and the winning five films with the highest average scores will be announced at an online live event on Sunday, June 7.
The annual Hot Docs Festival, which was slated for April 30-May 10, was postponed on March 13 due to the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic. On May 5, Hot Docs announced that Hot Docs Festival Online will offer more than 135 official selections for at-home audiences to stream directly from www.hotdocs.ca on its recently launched Hot Docs at Home TVOD platform. Hot Docs Festival Online runs May 28-June 6, with a majority of films being available for extended post-Festival viewing until June 24. The film line-up is available online.
