Saigon Story, Namesake təm kʷaθ nan among winners at DOXA 2026 awards
Illustrated Legacies: Graveyard of the Pacific wins Nigel Moore Award; And the Fish Fly Above Our Heads و الأسماك تطير فوق رؤوسنا named best feature
Saigon Story (left), and Illustrated Legacies: Graveyard of the Pacific.
KIM NGUYEN’S Saigon Story: Two Shootings in the Forest Kingdom won the Colin Low Award for Best Canadian Director, as DOXA Documentary Film Festival unveiled its top honours at its 2026 closing event this weekend.
Jurors praised the National Film Board documentary for “powerful and multi-layered storytelling, which masterfully connects the disparate aftermaths of the Vietnam War.” Stir spoke to the celebrated director in the article here about the film tracing the intergenerational impacts of the photo known as Saigon Execution. Special mention was given to Jean-François Caissy’s Kindergarten.
Meanwhile, Evan Adams and Eileen Francis won top B.C. directing honours for Namesake təm kʷaθ nan, a confrontation of residential school denialism centring around the community debate over the name of Powell River. Morgan Tams received special mention for Green Valley.
The best feature prize went to Dima El-Horr’s And the Fish Fly Above Our Heads و الأسماك تطير فوق رؤوسنا, for which the jury “appreciated the unexpected and tender perspective on masculinity offered by the film. As El-Horr follows men who swim every day along the Mediterranean coastline of Beirut, haunted by the lingering ghost of war, we experience the melancholy and repetition of this daily ritual.” Ça reste entre nous received a special mention.
The Nigel Moore Award for Youth Programming went to Tanner Zurkoski, a Cree and Métis filmmaker based on Vancouver Island whose Illustrated Legacies: Graveyard of the Pacific mixes live-action documentary with animated historical re-creations. It traces original contact between European settlers and First Nations on the West Coast. The jury stated: “This film seamlessly weaves animated storytelling with archival material and interviews, offering an informative and deeply engaging history of the North Pacific through an indigenous lens. It stands as a powerful continuation of oral traditions and knowledge-keeping practices, beautifully supplemented through animation.” Chouwa Liang’s Replica received a special mention.
And in the short-documentary category, Shayma Awawdeh's Intersecting Memory ذاكرة متقاطعة and Lindsay McIntyre's Tuktuit : Caribou shared top prize. 
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