Diana Sanchez, Executive Director of Hot Docs, at the Toronto theatre on March 4. Ms. Sanchez joined Hot Docs as executive director in March, 2025.Jennifer Roberts/The Globe and Mail
A month and a half out from launching the 33rd edition of its annual film festival, Hot Docs has reconstituted its board of directors, adding seven members and bidding farewell to three following a period of significant financial and organizational turmoil.
On Wednesday, the Toronto-based arts organization announced the following industry leaders would join its board: Doug Allison, chief executive officer of the Northpine Foundation and former chief financial officer of the Toronto International Film Festival; Julie Bristow, founder of the television development firm Catalyst; Merit Jensen Carr, president of Merit Motion Pictures; Lea Marin, a development executive at the CBC; Habiba Nosheen, co-founder of the production company Akelo Media; Noah Segal, co-president of Elevation Pictures; and Aaron Zeghers, a filmmaker and founder of The Infinite Image.
Three members of the group – Carr, Nosheen and Zeghers – were appointed by the Documentary Organization of Canada, which founded Hot Docs in 1993 and has long maintained representation on the board.
Since June, 2024, the not-for-profit has operated under the aegis of a “working board” of just three people: documentarian Nicholas de Pencier, Nulogy chief operating officer Kevin Wong, and Pemberley Investments’ Lydia Luckevich, all of whom have now departed.
Ahead of the organization’s 2024 festival, which was plagued by financial uncertainty and a mass exodus of programmers, the board numbered 23 members.
Hot Docs sells flagship Toronto cinema for $6.25-million, signs multi-year lease
“I think it’s going to be a great new board dynamic – we have people who are really knowledgeable about the industry, but can also speak to different facets of it, from production to the market ecosystem to what’s happening in festivals,” says Diana Sanchez, who joined Hot Docs as executive director in March, 2025, following the departure of president Marie Nelson the previous spring.
In addition to the board news, Hot Docs announced earlier this week the first 13 titles set to play its 2026 festival, including the world premieres of The Tower That Built a City, Canadian filmmaker Mark Myers’s look at the 50th anniversary of the CN Tower, and Dori Berinstein’s biodoc Kenny Loggins: Conviction of the Heart. The festival’s full lineup will be unveiled March 24.
The spate of announcements inside Hot Docs follows what Sanchez calls a productive fall and winter, with philanthropic and corporate partners returning to the festival in strong numbers.
“It definitely has not been a walk in the park, as you can imagine. But what’s been incredible is how I feel like everyone, from our audiences to our funders to the filmmaking community, they all want Hot Docs to thrive. And that’s sustained me through a lot of it,” says Sanchez, who notes the organization has sold more advance ticket packages for this year’s festival than the year prior, even before the full programming slate has been revealed.
“This speaks to where the organization as a whole is going. It speaks to the momentum that we’re building,”
Still, this year’s edition of Hot Docs – which could once boast of being the largest documentary festival in North America – will feel similar in size and scope to the 2025 festival, which screened 113 feature-length films, down from the 168 programmed in 2024 and the 214 that played in 2023. (It is not as if programmers faced a paucity of choice: More than 2,800 films were submitted for this year’s festival, the highest since 2020.)
While organizers are bringing back the industry forum program, in which filmmakers connect with financiers and distributors, that offering, too, will be in a more “modest form,” according to Sanchez.
“We’re still in rebuild mode, and my focus is on doing that with cautious growth,” says the festival leader.
Another key part of the organization’s stabilization was selling Hot Docs’ flagship Toronto cinema on Bloor Street West this past August for $6.25-million, with a multi-year lease agreement allowing the arts organization to continue operating the facility. At the time, the new owner asked to remain anonymous, with Hot Docs stating that the purchaser was “a neighbour who is interested in supporting the arts in Toronto.”
Land records later revealed that the century-old building was purchased by a numbered corporation operated by restaurateurs Steven Nikolaou and Joan Nikolaou.
“We still of course work in the building, and it’s just given us a little bit more security, being able to lease it back,” says Sanchez. “But otherwise it’s been an opportunity to rethink how we’re programming inside the building beyond the festival.”
On that note, Hot Docs has been revamping its year-round offerings inside its 650-seat single-screen theatre, aiming to mix new releases alongside retrospective titles featuring special guests that “eventize” the moviegoing experience.
In January, Hot Docs Cinema launched two new monthly series: Jukedocs, in which writer and podcaster Niko Stratis presents boundary-pushing music docs, and Stories We Told, a series exploring Canadian documentaries that allow audiences to either revisit classics or gain exposure to projects that are otherwise difficult to discover in the streaming era.
Up first for Stories We Told, which is organized by Hot Docs Cinema lead programmer Vivian Belik, was a 30th anniversary screening of Peter Lynch’s acclaimed film Project Grizzly, while director Brett Story and members of her filmmaking team will attend the 10th anniversary screening of The Prison in Twelve Landscapes later this month.
“We’re not always so good about celebrating our heroes in the Canadian documentary industry – we’re a bit more hesitant to mythologize them and return to their work. It’s almost like these films go die in a graveyard and never get seen again,” says Belik.
“There are also docs that are on the NFB site, which you can view for free. But I think that film is a medium that needs to be enjoyed with an audience. And bringing in guests help recontextualize it all, and discover the trajectory of an artist. Canadian documentaries are this country’s calling card to the film industry. Let’s point to this legacy and celebrate it.”
There is also a desire inside the organization to balance socially important work with the kind of high-buzz documentary fare that compels audiences who might otherwise not be paying attention to the landscape. But the end goal is putting the spotlight on all things non-fiction.
“There was a period in recent history where we were kind of showing more fiction films, but we’re the first documentary-focused theatre in the world, and we want to champion that form,” says Belik. “That means a very diverse range of programming, from politically and socially interesting work that’s balanced with lighter fare looking at design, art, and music.”
The 2026 Hot Docs Festival runs April 23 through May 3 in Toronto.