DOXA Documentary Film Festival
For over 24 years, DOXA Documentary Film Festival has been bringing the best in Canadian and international nonfiction cinema to Vancouver audiences. DOXA draws its name from the Greek word meaning “common belief” or “popular opinion”.
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.
