DOXA Documentary Film Festival is pleased to announce the winners of its 2026 competitions.
Presented by DOC Northwest and CFMDC, the Colin Low Award for Best Canadian Director is awarded to Kim Nguyen for Saigon Story: Two Shootings in the Forest Kingdom. Jurors Damien Eagle Bear, Olivia Norquay and Anaïs Elboujdaïni recognize Nguyen’s powerful and multi-layered storytelling, which masterfully connects the disparate aftermaths of the Vietnam War. The documentary bridges two seemingly disconnected narratives that gain profound depth as they unfold. Furthermore, the director offers an original critique of the ethics surrounding war imagery—interrogating both what is captured on film and what remains hidden. The documentary carries a haunting resonance today, illustrating how contemporary conflicts sow seeds of unimaginable consequence for generations to come.
The jury also wanted to give a Special Mention to director Jean-François Caissy for Kindergarten. Through observational filmmaking, this documentary invites us into the chaotic, curious and joyful moments of early childhood. The film’s gentle, and almost zoological, approach highlights the developing emotions and burgeoning motor skills of its complicated young subjects, while showcasing the often undervalued and underseen labour of childcare.
The DOXA Short Documentary Award is co-awarded to: Intersecting Memory ذاكرة متقاطعة by Shayma' Awawdeh and Tuktuit (Caribou) by Lindsay McIntyre.
Jurors Bryan Sullivan, Hubert Sabino-Brunette and Michael Toledano share, “We wanted to honour these two vastly different, but equally strong films with a co-award."
The jury was moved by both films, "Intersecting Memory is a powerful, timely and deeply humanizing film, which offers a rare account of the Second Intifada as understood through the childhood memories of filmmaker Shayma’ Awawdeh. Intersecting Memory counters decades of noise by speaking a compelling truth, and inspires hope through images of Palestinian resilience, power and resistance. This window into the recent past helps us understand our present. Awawdeh masterfully brings us into daily life under Israeli occupation, inviting us to understand how a child experiences displacement and genocide."
The jury was thrilled by Tuktuit (Caribou), "an experimental film that is deeply grounded and principled, beautifully and meaningfully hand processed with the land itself. Filmed on hand-made emulsion made from the caribou we see on screen and developed in lichen, composed with hypnotic images and rich soundscapes, Tuktuit is itself an act of connecting to and honouring the land. While asking “What does it mean to honour?”, Lindsay McIntyre answer this question with this incredible love letter to Inuit Nunangat (Inuit homeland)."
Presented by Vancouver Film Studios and Pacific Backlot, the winner of the Vancouver Film Studios Award for Best BC Director is Evan Adams and Eileen Francis for Namesake təm kʷaθ nan. Jurors Damien Eagle Bear, Anaïs Elboujdaini and Olivia Norquay recognized that Adams and Francis “captured a necessary and meaningful conversation, confronting the past and current residential school denialism. The directors documented the ongoing hard work of communal healing from the legacy of Residential Schools and give hope that Canada can address historical atrocities.”
The jury also wanted to highlight with a Special Mention Green Valley by director Morgan Tams, which is a documentary that excels as much in its form as in its substance. Its meditative imagery unveils a way of life on the fringes of a collapsing world. The film offers a profound exploration of intergenerational bonds that transcend the traditional family unit, community resilience, and the raw realities of illness. All is centered around exceptional individuals who live by no one’s rules but their own. In a digital world on the brink of crisis, the film’s subjects invite us to slow down and reclaim control over our lives.
The winner of the DOXA Best Feature Documentary Award is AND THE FISH FLY ABOVE OUR HEADS و الأسماك تطير فوق رؤوسنا directed by Dima El-Horr.
Jurors Julie Le Hegarat, Milena Salazar and Sean Stiller appreciated the unexpected and tender perspective on masculinity offered by the film. "As El-Horr follows men who swim every day along the Mediterranean coastline of Beirut, haunted by the lingering ghost of war, we experience the melancholy and repetition of this daily ritual. Attuned both to the rhythms of daily life and the larger political and historical forces surrounding them, the film creates an intimate and honest portrait of lives lived at the periphery of war."
The jurors would like to award an honourable mention to Ça reste entre nous, directed by Maryam Shapoorian. "Shapoorian’s exquisite visual and sonic language confers an intimate quality to the archives and objects documented in the film. Similar to reading a book, the film unfolds with quiet restraint, inviting one’s imagination to inhabit spaces of memory, loss, and longing."
The recipient of the Nigel Moore Award for Youth Programming is Illustrated Legacies: Graveyard of the Pacific, directed by Tanner Zurkoski.
"This film seamlessly weaves animated storytelling with archival material and interviews, offering an informative and deeply engaging history of the North Pacific through an indigenous lens. It stands as a powerful continuation of oral traditions and knowledge-keeping practices, beautifully supplemented through animation. The film’s local setting resonated with us jurors, capturing Coast Salish territory through sweeping cinematography. By challenging colonial perspectives of early encounters, the film highlights Indigenous reclamation and survival in a way that will strongly connect with youth audiences."
Jurors Mack Riddell, Olivia Moore and Emily Ash Cutajar also announced, "We would like to give honourable mention to the film Replica from filmmaker Chouwa Liang. Her film follows three young women from across China, finding connection through digital romances with AI chatbots. Themes of loneliness, cultural expectations, and feminism intersect as the subjects navigate the pressures of an increasingly hostile and isolated modern world. Falling in love with an AI avatar might seem like a chilling, futuristic prospect, but Liang provides a nuanced and empathetic investigation into the need for connection, even through the algorithm. Replica is a timely and deeply human film that will resonate with youth navigating an increasingly digital world."