Red Fever, Bye Bye Tiberias, and La Laguna del Soldado amid award winners at DOXA Documentary Film Festival
Wouldn’t Make It Any Other Way named best short, while Kamay takes Elevate prize
Red Fever.
Bye Bye Tiberias.
DOXA DOCUMENTARY FILM Festival has announced the winners of its 2024 competitions.
Neil Diamond and Catherine Bainbridge’s Red Fever has earned the Nigel Moore Award for Youth Programming. The film digs into the appropriation of Indigenous ways across everything from pop culture to fashion and sports. Jurors Olivia Moore, Anna Hetherington, Emily Ash Cutajar, and Darius Darabi called the documentary “a witty and dynamic film that highlights the deep and profound roots of Indigenous influence on western media, culture, and identity”, praising it for “grounding indigeneity in the present and pushing back against the persistent narrative of Indigenous peoples’ [only] existing in the past, this film is a captivating and necessary watch that will resonate with all audiences.”
In the same category, the jurors gave special mention to Singing Back the Buffalo, by Tasha Hubbard, calling it “a vital film during this moment as we strive for reconciliation, sustainability, and climate justice. Highlighting survivance and revitalization through the movement to restore the buffalo, Hubbard’s film provides a message of hope that will resonate and inspire youth audiences and generations to come.”
Lina Soualem’s Bye Bye Tiberias was named the winner of this year’s DOXA Feature Documentary Award. “This urgent personal documentary of longing, displacement and connection illuminates Palestinian family archives at a time when these documents and stories are being erased in the ongoing genocide,” said jurors Liz Marshall, Sara Wylie, and Hejer Charf.
They gave special mentions to The Neurocultures Collective and Steven Eastwood’s The Stimming Pool and to Kamay by Ilyas Yourish and Shahrokh Bikaran.
The Colin Low Award for Best Canadian Director, presented by the Directors Guild of Canada, went to Pablo Alvarez-Mesa for La Laguna del Soldado. Jurors Florence Lamothe, Ryan Ermacora, and Hind Saïh saluted the filmmaker for “his skillful layering of Colombian history and the specifics of place through an ecological perspective. A film that is as sensitive as it is critical, La Laguna del Soldado probes a lineage of colonial violence even as it continues into the present. Through its inventive and sensorial construction, distinctions between form and content dissolve into the fog.”
Special jury mentions went to Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell, and Michael Toledano for Yintah and to Lisa Jackson for Wilfred Buck.
Elsewhere, jurors Gianluca Matarrese, Éléonore Goldberg, and Kimberly Ho presented the Short Documentary Award to Hao Zhou’s Wouldn’t Make It Any Other Way. “Deploying a broad corpus of emotions, Wouldn’t Make It Any Other Way deliciously combines elements of belonging, identity and hope, expertly highlighted by Hao Zhou’s cinematography and editing,” they said. A special jury mention was given to Ibrahim Handal’s A Short Film About a Chair.
Meanwhile, the Elevate Award, presented by Elevate Inclusion Strategies, went to Yourish and Bikaran for Kamay, described by jurors Aya Garcia, Damien Eagle Bear, and Brandon Wint as having “a compelling, heart-wrenching level of cinematic intimacy”.
Their special jury mention was for Toledano’s Yintah.
Jury statements can be read in full on the DOXA website.
The festival continues on to May 12. 
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