Two Hot Docs board members resign as beleaguered film festival marks opening weekend

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The Hot Docs film festival celebrated the opening weekend of its 31st edition under a cloud of financial uncertainty and fraught politics, including the resignation of two members of its board.

Barry Avrich and Laura Curtis Ferrera stepped down for personal reasons, Robin Mirsky, co-chair of the board, told The Globe and Mail.

Mr. Avrich, an award-winning Canadian filmmaker, and Ms. Curtis Ferrera, senior vice-president and global chief marketing officer at Bank of Nova Scotia, were both listed as board members on Hot Docs’ website as recently as this past Tuesday, two days before North America’s largest documentary film fest kicked off its 2024 edition.

Representatives for Scotiabank, whose wealth management arm is a platinum level sponsor of Hot Docs, did not immediately return requests for comment. Mr. Avrich, whose latest film Born Hungry made its Hot Docs premiere on Friday, could not be reached for comment.

The departures bring Hot Docs’ board down from 23 members in the spring of 2023 to just 14 today.

In an interview last week with The Globe, board member and filmmaker Nick de Pencier said that Hot Docs has begun to look at the governance, size and composition of its board, adding that “any insinuation that there are people leaving in discomfort would be greatly overstated.”

The two recent resignations, though, are only the latest developments to rock the beleaguered organization over the past two months.

In early March, in a public plea rare for Canadian arts institutions, Hot Docs president Marie Nelson told The Globe that the organization was facing “significant operational challenges” and that its future was in serious doubt. Weeks later, filings with the Canada Revenue Agency revealed that Hot Docs had a deficit of just more than $2-million in the period ending May, 2023.

Asked last week whether she was aware of the deficit when starting her position in June, 2023, Ms. Nelson told The Globe that, “When I started there were lots of financial inquiries done across the organization to make sure that we had the most accurate picture, and that work was in process as I arrived.”

After being excluded from the 2024 federal budget two weeks ago, Hot Docs organizers issued a statement excoriating the Liberal government for “picking winners and losers in Canada’s cultural landscape.”

“Our conversations with all levels of government were quite difficult, because we were in a place where we believed the resources just didn’t exist,” Ms. Nelson told The Globe last week. “We’re thrilled to see support for cultural institutions in the federal budget – we want our partners to get the support they need to make it through to the other side – but we want and deserve to join them.”

Ten members of the Hot Docs programming team resigned in late March, weeks before the festival began, with organizers also revealing that newly installed artistic director Hussain Currimbhoy had departed for “personal reasons” after four months on the job.

Hot Docs has also found itself in the middle of the intense public division over the war in Gaza.

A week before the festival began, organizers called “for an immediate ceasefire by all parties, a release of hostages on all sides, and that immediate humanitarian aid be made available to the people of Gaza,” a statement that has been decried by both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian supporters.

And on Friday, the Documentary Organization of Canada, which founded Hot Docs in 1994 and is deeply linked through its historic representation on Hot Docs’ board, publicly urged leading festival sponsor Scotiabank to divest from the Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems.

During the Hot Docs premiere of her new film Union on Friday night, Canadian filmmaker Brett Story read a statement onstage also calling out Scotiabank’s investment in Elbit.

“We share this film after 202 days of genocidal violence inflicted with seeming impunity against the Palestinian people of Gaza by the state of Israel, with the support of the Canadian government and with weapons financed by this festival’s own sponsor, Scotiabank.”

Asked about morale inside Hot Docs in the lead-up to this year’s festival, Ms. Nelson told The Globe last week that, “Everyone who hosts a festival knows that by the time you get on the eve of things, it’s tough. It wouldn’t be honest to say there isn’t that sense of pressure. But I can also tell you that when I go into the office, everyone is super-focused on delivering a fantastic festival.”

This year’s edition of Hot Docs runs through May 5.