Hot Docs Sidebar Made in Ukraine Boosts Ukrainian Docs, Market Action, Dialogue
Jennie Punter Last year, during an online panel at Hot Docs film festival featuring Ukrainian documentary filmmakers who were staying in place, Oksana Karpovych told attendees how she’d gained knowledge working alongside foreign media crews covering the war, and was now applying that to her own creative documentary projects. This year, at the festival’s 30th anniversary edition, Karpovych attended the in-person Forum market event to pitch “Intercepted” — her observational doc exploring the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — which ended up winning the 2023 CMF-Hot Docs Canadian Pitch Prize. With Ukraine in the spotlight at Hot Docs this year, both audiences and industry attendees are getting wide exposure to the films and ideas of leading Ukrainian documentary creators. The timing of this programming is perfect, said Hot Docs programmer Myrocia Watamaniuk, not only for the obvious reason.