DOXA Documentary Film Festival names 2025 award winners

Saints and Warriors, #skoden, and Sudan, Remember Us are among the titles that secured wins

DOXA DOCUMENTARY FILM Festival wrapped up its 2025 edition yesterday, and the winners of its annual awards have now been announced.

Among them Patrick Shannon’s Saints and Warriors, the fest’s Closing Gala screening, received the Colin Low Award for Best Canadian Director (presented by the Directors Guild of Canada). In the announcement today, jurors Chris Chong, Fabianny Deschamps, and Corey Payette said that Saints and Warriors earned the prize for “its beautifully layered narrative, its honest and intimate portrayal of contemporary Indigenous life, and a final act that was deeply moving and offered us an inspiring hope for the future”. An honourable mention went to Lyana Patrick’s Nechako: It Will Be a Big River Again.

The Nigel Moore Award for Youth Programming went to Kim O’Bomsawin’s They Are Sacred, which screened as part of the Rated Y for Youth program. They Are Sacred takes an intimate look at a father-son relationship while showing neurodiversity through an Indigenous lens. Jurors Olivia Moore, Darius Darabi, Emily Ash Cutajar, and Anna Hetherington shared that they chose the film because it “offers an empowering story of reclamation, acceptance, and community that is vital at this moment”.

The Vancouver Film Studios Award for Best BC Director, a new award presented by VFS and Pacific Backlot, went to Damien Eagle Bear for #skoden. An honourable mention in that category went to codirectors Elizabeth Vibert and Chen Wang for Aisha’s Story.

The DOXA Short Documentary Award went to “Correct Me If I’m Wrong 如你所愿” by director Hao Zhou, with an honourable mention for Helen Lee’s “Paris to Pyongyang”.

Sudan, Remember Us, directed by Hind Meddeb, won Best Feature Documentary Award for international documentaries. And two honourable mentions, Casey Carter’s To Use a Mountain and Elizabeth Lo’s Mistress Dispeller, were also named.

Featured

Emily Lyth

Emily Lyth is a Vancouver-based writer and editor who graduated from Langara College’s Journalism program. Her decade of dance training and passion for all things food-related are the foundation of her love for telling arts, culture, and community stories.

Articles

Laura Crema pays tribute to Jazz on a Summer’s Day star, August 9 at VIFF Live

Local singer puts her own improvisational spice on classic songs in ode to Anita O’Day’s iconic performance in the acclaimed, 1959 Newport Jazz Festival documentary

Maiku Hama trilogy still buzzes with ’90s-era wit, corruption, and cool at The Cinematheque

Hayashi Kaizo’s hard-boiled trio moves from cheerful spoof to disturbing violence in a distinctly Japanese play on old Mickey Spillane stories

At The Cinematheque’s Film Noir 2026, Niagara’s Marilyn Monroe conjures a full-colour femme fatale

Set on the edge of Horseshoe Falls, the stunningly shot crime thriller with the dangerous femme fatale deserves a new look on the big screen

Vancouver Latin American Film Festival unveils program of more than 70 films for event September 10 to 20

Highlights include Argentinian-Uruguayan opener A Loose End, and guest filmmakers Oscar Ruiz Navia and Mayra Hermosillo

VIFF Live announces 2026 program of film screenings, immersive concerts, and “reworlding”

The series includes appearances by Canadian and international artists, including throat-singing duo Silla, composer Kelly Moran, and experimental rock act Xiu Xiu

Unlock serious savings at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival with VIFF+ memberships

Save up to 30 percent on festival packs and passes—and get exclusive access to festival tickets 24 hours before they go on sale to the general public

Local theatre artists’ project King Arthur’s Night culminates in a buoyant new film that blurs documentary and fantasy

Now streaming on Knowledge.ca, John Bolton–helmed movie stars Niall McNeil, Marcus Youssef, Veda Hille, Nathan Kay, and more, in a mix of artists with and without Down syndrome

Canada Day Animation Jamboree celebrates National Film Board classics, at the Rio Theatre July 1

Oscar-winning Vancouver animator David Fine curates some of his favourite shorts, plus his own Animal Behaviour and Bob’s Birthday

Screenings at The Cinematheque and VIFF Centre bring past and future into focus on National Indigenous Peoples Day, June 21

Ranging from 1970s-era experiments in animation to an urgently current documentary, the offerings delve into the meaning of community and the power of place names

Women outwit Iran’s ban on watching World Cup in Offside, at Deckchair Cinema, June 25

Screened outdoors at Cates Deck, outside The Polygon Gallery, Jafar Panahi’s guerrilla-style 2006 comedy captures the mood of World Cup fever

Deckchair Cinema returns to The Polygon Gallery's waterfront Cates Deck this summer, starting June 25

This year’s series features al fresco screenings of top-tier sports films, from Shaolin Soccer to A League of Their Own

B.C. filmmakers create grassroots vision of liberation and risk with phantasmagoric feature Lucid

Amid small miracles, and also tragedies, Deanna Milligan and Ramsey Fendall conjured analogue, ’90s-era strangeness by adopting the spirit of a community art project

Hear the Orpheum’s original Wurlitzer accompanying The Lodger on May 25

The theatre’s organ was installed in 1927—the same year Alfred Hitchcock released his first thriller, about a Jack the Ripper–esque killer

The Cinematheque hosts Love, Sex, Religion, Death: The Complete Films of Terence Davies, May 21 to June 28

Retrospective unites the late British filmmaker’s feature-length works, including A Quiet Passion and Distant Voices, Still Lives

HAUI’s “Aunt Harriet” draws together fragments of history at rEvolver Festival, May 24

Short film poetically remembers a Black woman from an old photograph

Kunsang Kyirong’s 100 Sunset peers into hidden daily lives of Tibetan-Canadian community

With influences including Hideaki Anno and Alfred Hitchcock, debut feature by Surrey-raised director builds uncanny atmosphere as a quiet young woman points her camera into neighbours’ windows

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

The Last One for the Road follows two barflies through the back side of Veneto, at VIFF Centre, to May 14

Down-and-out buddies follow the randomness of life in evocatively shot Italian film by Francesco Sossai

Acclaimed director Sophy Romvari creates emotion-charged family portrait in Blue Heron

At the VIFF Centre, debut feature by fast-rising filmmaker splices past and present in a powerful story that is part time-travel fiction, part nostalgic vision of ’90s Vancouver Island