Organizers of the 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival unveiled this year’s lineup of documentaries and say the festival will continue, despite a flurry of recent resignations.
On March 20. Hussain Currimbhoy stepped down as the artistic director for Hot Docs.
Two days later, in a post shared widely on social media, former international programmer Myrocia Watamaniuk said she and nine of her colleagues were also stepping down.
Myrocia's account was private but this screenshot has been shared by many publications Photo credit: Unknown
At a press conference Tuesday morning to announce this year’s lineup, festival President Marie Nelson addressed the situation in her opening speech.
“There are times when you are trying to bring change in sometimes you don’t get it right,” she said.
Nelson said that the message she wants people to take away from her speech is to take care of people and the rest will fall into place, she admits that there are times where they were not taken care of and that she was more concerned with change.
Other posts on social media accused Hot Docs of having a “toxic work culture.”
https://twitter.com/JRathiganthan/status/1772619976244965768
Nelson acknowledged she introduced a lot of changes.
“Are there things that we attempted to do that pushed us beyond our boundaries? Yes.”
She added the festival needs to do more to make sure its programmers feel more valued and that “every single person in this community supports them because that is true,” Nelson said.
Nelson hopes that the programmers will reconsider in the future.
“There is every desire that I would turn the corner next week, and have more of our programmers decide to come back and join us, we understand the value of the programmers to this festival we want them to be a part of supporting the filmmakers in those who have been invited to be here as a part of this experience,” she said.
The festival will kick off with the opening film being “Luther Never Too Much” by Dawn Porter.
The event will continue with many other documentary series such as “Union” a film about Amazon workers fighting to unionize, “Power” a film about America’s police force and “Red Fever” a film about depictions of indigenous people in pop culture.
The 2024 Hot Docs festival runs from April 25 to May 25 at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in Toronto.