Stir is a digital media organization dedicated to covering Vancouver’s arts and culture scene through independent journalism.
Stir is a digital media organization dedicated to covering Vancouver’s arts and culture scene through independent journalism.
The beloved annual event aims to provoke critical thought, inspire action, and support audiences’ understanding of the world we inhabit, in all of its complexity—just like the world’s best documentaries do. DOXA promotes public engagement and discource through public screenings, workshops, panel discussions, public forums, and youth educational programs.
Networking opportunities for filmmakers and other industry professionals are a huge feature of the festival, whether it’s through panels, juries, industry events, or ancillary activities, the goal is always artistic excellence, cultural diversity, and gender parity. The festival has made its name for diversity and equity in film programming, featuring the premieres of films made by Indigenous filmmakers since its inception, and is of critical importance to the Vancouver arts community and across Turtle Island at large.
Feature documentary award winners from the past several years show the impressive and diverse range of programming, whether it’s Virunga, the powerful look at Congolese fighting to protect gorilla habitat; The Creators of Universes, an eccentric personal story of a teen and his 97-year-old grandmother as they spend their days making amateur shoot-em-up telenovelas; or Greetings From the Free Forests, the atmospheric study of Slovenian forests that once hid war atrocities.
Rated Y for Youth and the Justice Forum are cornerstone programs, recurring at DOXA each year. Rated Y facilitates dialogue and critical media literacy for youth. Meanwhile, the Justice Forum showcases films that facilitate critical dialogue around a broad range of social issues and sows the seeds for social change, pairing each film with a panel of speakers including filmmakers, experts in the field, academics, and community activists.
The Documentary Media Society presents the festival out of The Post at 750, where it’s a founding member tenant of the 110 Arts Cooperative that manages the arts hub. The Society was founded by Kris Anderson in 1998. It operates in a horizontal management structure, with a core group of staff who share directorship collectively instead of an executive director, and was recently certified as a Living Wage Employer
Into the future, DOXA strives to maintain its commitment to grassroots social justice as well as providing a platform for innovative new forms of media presentation.
Mr. Nobody Against Putin takes an urgent look at Russian indoctrination; Spare My Bones, Coyote! finds horrors at the U.S. border; Eight Postcards From Utopia runs weird commercials from free-market Romania; and more
In Have You Heard Judi Singh?, Vancouver director interweaves archival footage, re-created moments, and mesmerizing music in tribute to late Punjabi-Black artist
Montreal filmmaker Denis Côté started out making a portrait of a shy BDSM worker and ended up capturing a generation’s encounter with the endless recursions of social media
In NFB documentary, Lyana Patrick chronicles the environmental harm caused by the Kenney Dam
A panel discussion with workers and community advocates takes place after the VIFF Centre screening
New paraDOXA initiative will highlight experimental films like To Use a Mountain
In Aisha’s Story, a Palestinian matriarch uses food for generational healing, while Saints and Warriors follows a Haida basketball team
Yintah captures Wet’suwet’en pipeline resistance, while La Laguna del Soldado conjures the sounds and mists of a fraught Colombia
Wouldn’t Make It Any Other Way named best short, while Kamay takes Elevate prize
Eternal You, A Man Imagined, Black Box Diaries, nanekawâsis, and other intriguing offerings at the celebration of new nonfiction film
New DOXA Documentary Film Festival feature tells the incredible story of the Armstrong company, and how spending childhood summers there inspired McNeil’s own art-making
Filmmaker Shannon Walsh turns her lens on a labyrinthian fantasy world and an all-consuming love that transcends death
Documentary film shares the story of Jacob Beaton, who is training Indigenous people to grow their own food
Shannon Walsh’s Adrianne & the Castle (2023) opens the festival’s screenings at the Vancouver Playhouse on May 4
Running May 2 to 12, fest also features nanekawâsis, Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story, Tea Creek, and Caravan Farm Theatre doc The Originals
King Coal, We Will Not Fade Away, and Notes on Displacement among the titles honoured
Notes from Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams’s Satan Wants You, plus We Will Not Fade Away, You Were My First Boyfriend, and Kite Zo A
La Singla searches for a lost flamenco star; A Way to B profiles the members of a daring disability-arts troupe; and Cheenee traces the history of Indian diaspora in Trinidad and Tobago
Director Karen Cho’s new documentary looks at Chinatowns in Vancouver, New York City, Montreal, and beyond confronting development and displacement
Filmmaker Amy Miller’s dissection of the BC homemade-bomb caper raises questions around democracy
Films chosen by Nya Lewis and Farah Clémentine Dramani-Issifou are accompanied by thought-provoking essays
The 22nd edition includes 39 thought-provoking feature- and mid-length releases and 25 shorts
Galb’Echaouf and Children of the Mist also earn juried prizes
Film traces soprano Heather Pawsey’s long journey to decolonize a work about an Okanagan homesteader
This year’s standouts include Fire of Love, Rewind & Play, and Children of the Mist
Terra Femme fashions its own pioneering archeology; 1970 looks back at the brutality of Cold War Poland; From the Balcony captures humanity from a unique perspective
Colin Askey’s documentary takes viewers inside the Overdose Prevention Society
In which filmmaker Teresa Alfeld helps a former doubter find a fevered appreciation for one of Vancouver’s most misunderstood bands
Offerings include series devoted to landscapes and resistance, archival materials, and grandmother figures
Volcano film Fire of Love to open fest that runs May 5 to 15
