Canada's biggest documentary festival says it's dying. Documentarians worry they're next
A misunderstood and mis‐ treated killer whale. An in‐ vestigation into the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and American gun culture at large. An in‐ convenient truth about the future of planet Earth in the face of devastating cli‐ mate change.
If you go by over‐ whelmingly successful films like Blackfish, Bowling for Columbine and An Inconve‐ nient Truth, it might seem like documentaries are every‐ where we look, affecting and influencing how we perceive society and the world at large. But even as audiences clamour for true stories on their screens, the documen‐ tarians that make them are sounding alarm bells about the future of documentary filmmaking.
"I think in every respect, it's really more difficult. Streamers, broadcasters there's an attrition that is happening," said Jennifer Holness, a documentary film‐ maker and producer who's worked in the industry for over 20 years.
"That's just dollars and cents - you know, less money - and that less money trans‐ lates to less commissioning, which translates to smaller budgets, which translates to upheaval."
The result is clear, she says: a contracting industry that increasingly struggles to support documentarians.
While that contraction will most affect marginalized voices, she says it will eventu‐ ally impact all creators, leav‐ ing only those wealthy enough to do it - undermin‐ ing the purpose, and benefit, of documentaries.
"It becomes something for those who can afford it or a part-time gig that you can't sustain," she said. "This is not healthy. It's not a healthy space for people to be oper‐ ating out of."
It's a trend that's been ob‐ served by more than just filmmakers themselves.
LISTEN | Toronto's Hot Docs film festival in hot water:
Hot Docs chaos a symp‐ tom of wider uncertainty
Alongside a general suf‐ fering and shuttering of arts institutions across the coun‐ try, Canada's largest docu‐ mentary film festival sent a dizzying number of emails ahead of its 31st annual showing this year.
Alongside emailed en‐ treaties as blunt as "I'll be completely honest with you: we're struggling," written by Hot Docs president Marie Nelson, a profile in the Globe and Mail hammered home the precarious situation faced by the festival.
"We really meant it when we said that we were fearful that this year's festival is going to be our last," said Nelson when asked about the festival's request for emergency financial support from Ottawa.
Hot Docs representatives declined to speak to CBC for this article, but the struggling industry is far from the festi‐ val's only concern.
In a recent interview with CBC, Nelson said the festival was still feeling the effects of COVID-19 pandemic. As well, 10 festival employees re‐ cently resigned, blaming an "unprofessional and discrimi‐ natory environment" after a new artistic director was hired, resulting in a curtailed number of films over prior years. That director, Hussain Currimbhoy, stepped down in March.
And after the government neglected to provide emer‐ gency funding for Hot Docs, two high-profile Hot Docs board members resigned just days before the festival be‐ gan in late April. That re‐ duced its total number of board members from 24 last year to 13 now.
Pat Mullen, the publisher of Canadian documentary arts outlet POV Magazine, said that chaos is just a symptom of wider uncertain‐ ty and a quiet but growing panic in the feature-length documentary world.
"The things that we heard from Doc's report last fall are being echoed in the U.S.A. and the U.K.," he said, noting both the closure of produc‐ tion powerhouse Participant Media and dismal documen‐ tary box office numbers in England and Ireland, despite critically acclaimed releases.
"That landscape has total‐ ly shifted in the past 20 years, and really - even in the past maybe five - I think the streamers have totally taken over."
WATCH | How Canada's festivals are struggling: Streaming edutainment The incursion of stream‐ ing services is among the biggest drivers of the change in the industry, according to Mullen.
Because though un‐ scripted series like Tiger King, Making a Murderer and Don't F**k With Cats found mam‐ moth success - especially since the pandemic drove au‐ diences away from theatres and toward longform series
that can be watched at home - he says they've done so at the expense of featurelength documentaries.
And while streamers like Netflix do acquire critically acclaimed feature-length documentaries, Mullen says the overwhelming focus is on "edutainment" - true crime or celebrity series that "are maybe not as artistically so‐ phisticated."
A primary example would be the shuttering of Partici‐ pant, the company behind in‐ numerable socially motivated documentaries and dramas such as An Inconvenient Truth, Citizenfour, The Cove, Moonlight, Spotlight and oth‐ ers.
In a reaction piece in The Hollywood Reporter, promi‐ nent documentarians called the company's closure a "devastating" loss of one of the few avenues for getting serious documentaries fun‐ ded.
"If they're sort of throwing their hands up and saying, 'There's no future in this business,' then I think that will have a ripple effect," Mullen said.
"Shaking the confidence of other people - and funding [for] documentaries that are being political, that are being active, that are sort of shak‐ ing up the status quo and re‐ ally doing what the art form was built to do."
Drop in feature docu‐ mentary production
The ripple caused by Partici‐ pant's closure could force Hot Docs to fold. And that, in turn, could mean dire conse‐ quences for the documen‐ tary industry as a whole.
If the festival were to dis‐ appear, one of the most im‐ portant routes for documen‐ taries - especially Canadian ones - to get their films to buyers and audiences would go with it.
Documentary Organiza‐ tion of Canada executive di‐ rector Sarah Spring said they've already started watching that canary in the coal mine.
In their 2023 report, Spring says they noted a "huge drop" in feature docu‐ mentary production from 2016 to 2021, going from 60 to 35 total documentaries produced - or from compris‐ ing 5.1 per cent of Canadian production volume to only 2.4 per cent of it. Their report also found there was a rise in the number of low budget documentary series being produced.
But the disappearance of feature documentaries isn't due to a lack of appeal or val‐ ue, as Mullen noted a 2023 Telefilm Canada report that found documentaries are the second favourite movie genre among Canadian audi‐ ences.
But Spring already sees a potential future and pointed to moves in the right direc‐ tion: both Telefilm's funding of 30 documentaries last year (their most ever), and the Canada Media Fund's an‐ nounced intention to focus on feature-length documen‐ taries could open up oppor‐ tunities.
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While streaming services used to support the art form of documentary, she says that has "very much shifted."
Major streaming platfor‐ ms rarely purchase com‐ pleted documentaries that reflect or investigate national conversations, and she noted that in last year's Documen‐ tary Organization of Canada survey, not a single film iden‐ tified a foreign international streamer as a source of fund‐ ing for its creation.
It's part of an atmosphere that sees 75 per cent of doc‐ umentarians taking on other work to make a living, and only two in 10 making a profit from their films, ac‐ cording to a 2020 report from the U.S.-based Center for Media & Social Impact.
If protection and guidance is built up, Spring says, more opportunities could arise. But that's not a certainty.
"If we really do continue to invest in public funding in Canada for documentary filmmakers that's accessible, that's equitable, then we're going to see all of it," she said.
"If we only rely on market interest to guide our public policy … we won't have these rich, long, complex stories that push the art form for‐ ward, that we've become re‐ ally well known for around the world."