Hot Docs Announces New Members for Its Board of Directors

Hot Docs marks a step forward in its effort to rebuild by adding seven new members to its board of directors. The festival announced the new appointments today via a statement. Members officially joined the board a week ago, March 5, and replace the outgoing three-person working board that steered Hot Docs through a rocky few years of transition following massive staff departures and financial difficulties in 2024.

Hot Docs’ new board members are Doug Allison, Chief Executive Officer of The Northpine Foundation; Julie Bristow, Founder and CEO of Catalyst; Merit Jensen Carr, Executive Producer/ President, Merit Motion Pictures; Lea Marin, Director of Development (Drama), Scripted Department, CBC; Habiba Nosheen, Co-Founder, Akelo Media; Noah Segal, Co-President, Elevation Pictures; and Aaron Zeghers, Filmmaker/Educator and Founder, The Infinite Image.

Three of the members were appointed by the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC), which founded Hot Docs during its days as the Canadian Independent Film Caucus. (DOC also founded POV, although all three entities have been operating independently for years.) Jensen Carr is a veteran DOC member and her latest film Everest Dark recently screened at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema with what was reportedly one of its bigger audience draws of late. Nosheen, a three-time News and Documentary Emmy winner for her work on 60 Minutes and Frontline, is a Toronto-based DOC member and previously co-hosted CBC’s The Fifth Estate and worked as an investigative correspondent for CBC News. Zeghers is a DOC member based in Winnipeg who primarily works on the experimental film scene and was previously the director of the Gimli Film Festival.

Meanwhile, Bristow served as producer of The Pink Pill, which just landed as a hit on Paramount+, while Segal has a theatrical hit with Elevation’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert now in theatres. Marin is a veteran of the doc space thanks to her work at the NFB where she served as producer on films like Unarmed Verses and Stateless. Finally, Allison brings the mind for financial development as the Northpine Foundation aims to find new avenues for growth within organizations.

“In an increasingly complex world that prioritizes speed over context and sound bites over nuance, the documentary form is as relevant and necessary as ever,” said Hot Docs Executive Director Diana Sanchez in a statement. “Hot Docs, like many not-for-profit arts organizations in Canada and around the world, must continually evolve to meet the needs of our community, including audiences, filmmakers, and documentary professionals, while also stabilizing our funding to ensure future growth and impact. Our new board understands both the challenges and the opportunities ahead and brings a wealth of expertise and energy to our mission. I’m thrilled to partner with them as we work to rebuild and strengthen Hot Docs’ role in the local arts community and the broader Canadian and international documentary ecosystem, and I’m deeply grateful for their commitment.”

Hot Docs notes that board members “provide strategic direction, governance, and oversight to advance the organization’s mission and ensure its long-term sustainability. They contribute expertise, act as ambassadors for the organization, and support fundraising and stakeholder engagement activities.”

The three outgoing board members—Nicholas de Pencier, Kevin Wong, and Lydia Luckevich—will continue to serve in advisory capacities. The trio helped guide Hot Docs through leadership changeovers as well as the sale of the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, which included a lease-back component to keep the year-round programming running. The theatre now screens films weekly, albeit in a reduced capacity with Vivian Belik joining the team in November as the cinema’s lead programmer. Hot Docs unveiled its first wave of titles for the 2026 festival yesterday and will announced the full slate on March 24 with a new team announced last summer that includes veteran programmer Gabor Pertic as lead programmer and longtime Canadian programmers Alex Rogalski and Aisha Jamal leading the charge on Canadian features.

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