‘Yintah’ wins $50K Rogers Audience Award for best Canadian film at Hot Docs festival

Tsakë ze’ Howilhkat Freda Huson stands in ceremony while police arrive to enforce Coastal GasLink’s injunction at Unist’ot’en Healing Centre. “Yintah,” a film chronicling the journey of the Wet’suwet’en people as they confront the challenges of pipeline construction on their ancestral lands, won the $50,000 Rogers Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary at the Hot Docs film festival. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Hot Docs-Amber Bracken **MANDATORY CREDIT**

TORONTO — A documentary chronicling the Wet’suwet’en people’s resistance to pipeline construction on their ancestral lands has won the $50,000 Rogers Audience Award for best Canadian documentary at the Hot Docs film festival. 

“Yintah” won the prize as the 11-day festival in Toronto wrapped up on Sunday night. 

The documentary, directed by Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell and Michael Toledano, outlines a decade of growing resistance to exploitations of Wet’suwet’en land that led to protests culminating in 2020 rail blockades in several provinces. 

Other awards handed out in the last few days of the Hot Docs festival include the $5,000 DGC Special Jury Prize for Canadian feature documentary, which went to “Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story,” about a Black transgender music performer in Toronto who vanished from the spotlight at the height of her fame. 

The $10,000 Best Canadian Feature Documentary Award went to “The Soldier’s Lagoon,” which retraces Simon Bolivar’s journey across Colombia, while the $10,000 Best International Feature Documentary Award was given to “Farming the Revolution,” about Indian farmers’ unprecedented protests against their government’s new laws.

Hot Docs says it has awarded a total of $172,000 in cash and prizes to filmmakers this year in various categories. 

 This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 6, 2024.

The Canadian Press