“I’ve been travelling around the country a lot in the last couple years, and specifically to smaller, more regional communities, and I feel really excited and optimistic about all of the amazing projects and stories that are out there.”

Sarah Spring

Canada’s community of documentary filmmakers is a tight-knit family—and, like any family, is liable to hit a rocky patch now and then. With recent declines in the production of feature-length documentaries; public challenges facing Canada’s marquee documentary festival, Hot Docs; and streamers appearing to be less interested in documentary commissioning, its current patch is rockier than most.

But in our interview with Sarah Spring, head of DOC, she shares how robust cultural policy and the “scrappy, survivalist” spirit of documentary filmmakers make her optimistic about the future of the genre.

In your experience, what sets Canadian documentaries apart?

In Canada, we’ve had the benefit of a robust public funding system that has nurtured people’s careers over many, many films. And that leads to this community of professional documentary filmmakers—people who have the time to think deeply about what it means to be ethically rooted in documentary storytelling.

I talk a lot about the development of a Canadian cinematic language for documentary film. And I think that that language is rooted in people deeply reflecting on, thinking about, and caring about the stories they’re telling and having the time and the space to do so. That’s made possible by this network of support that we’re really lucky to have.

DOC’s last Getting Real report [an economic profile of Canada’s documentary industry] was released in 2023. How have feature documentaries been faring?

The last report showed a really drastic drop in feature documentary production in Canada. The majority of Canadian documentary production in Canada is now low-budget documentary series.

I know that CMPA’s Profile economic report shows enormous increases in documentary production, and until this last report, Getting Real has never differentiated between formats of the genre. So this is what I was really interested in honing in on. Filmmakers across the country were telling me for the last couple of years that broadcasters are asking for low-budget series. We now have data to support that. Documentary production of feature films dropped really drastically; what was increasing was low-budget series.

So that was an alarm bell. If we leave the cultural policy up to market interest, what they’re really looking at is: what’s the payout today? How is this going to benefit my network in the next week? In the next month? And documentaries have a long-term payoff. They’re never going to compete with Big Brother in the short term, but in 10 years, they’re still going to be gathering audiences.

When we’re talking about documentary success, we need to talk about it in terms of a payoff that will benefit Canadians for many years. It’s difficult for a broadcaster, who has all of these really intense economic pressures every day, to think about that, because they’re trying to survive against Netflix. The defenders of the documentary genre are struggling to survive against these massive American streaming giants, and everyone’s watching their content on the same screen. If we don’t have rules around it, then documentary literally will disappear.

Valerie Creighton, CEO of the Canada Media Fund, announced at Prime Time in February that documentaries would be a major focus for the organization. Any updates since then?

It was a very exciting Prime Time! The changes that the CMF has made since then were a sort of quiet revolution in the documentary sector—and I feel like I’m not overstating it.

Every year, DOC, like the CMPA and many others, communicates to the CMF all the ways we think they need to change how the programs are administered and performance envelopes are administered. And this year, they followed through on almost every single recommendation that DOC put forward.

These changes are going to powerfully impact people’s ability to run their productions in a sustainable way. The CMF made tweaks to ensure that broadcasters, within the money they put toward documentary, put a fixed amount toward long-form docs. They can’t put it all toward series. And they’ve also made important changes to the way they’re running the POV Fund, the special fund for author-driven long-form documentaries. They understand that it’s really difficult to get broadcasters on board for the POV Fund, so they’re opening it up to have combinations of distributor money in there. So, I think the documentary community really feels heard.

In light of its recent financial challenges and restructuring, what’s the enduring significance of Hot Docs?

You really can’t overstate its significance. It’s at the heart of Canada’s documentary community. Hot Docs was created by DOC 30 years ago, by filmmakers, to celebrate and show their films to Canadians and the world. It’s been this kind of beating heart for a lot of us. And I think that’s why the community feels so invested in it. We’re one big family here, so it’s been really challenging and heartbreaking to see Hot Docs go through so many struggles.

In one year, their artistic director stepped down. Ten programmers stepped down. They publicly announced financial difficulties. Their president stepped down. It was one blow after the other.

But on the other hand, there’s this incredibly hardworking, dedicated team within Hot Docs that are doing everything possible to rebuild it. They’ve cut the board down to three people. They’re going to have to reflect deeply on what it means to have a community-centred festival that is going through a period of humble rebuilding.

Looking ahead, what are your hopes and expectations for the industry?

I’m an optimist. I can’t help it. It’s just the way that I approach this work. I’ve been travelling around the country a lot in the last couple years, and specifically to smaller, more regional communities, and I feel really excited and optimistic about all of the amazing projects and stories that are out there.

Documentary filmmakers have always had really innovative ways of making it work. It’s a very scrappy, survivalist group of creators. They’re there; they’re making the work. What we really want is to make sure that they’re able to be full-time, professional creators.

I want to be excited about the CRTC ruling. We’ll see what happens. We may see a bunch of new money coming into the production sector, but we’re going to need some tweaks to ensure that it comes into actually Canadian-owned companies. I’m cautiously optimistic.

I’ve always worked very communally, and that idea of just getting through it together has always informed the way that I work. I think it’s interesting to see that spirit of collective, collaborative work in the policy side of the industry. It was an exciting surprise to see how the CMPA and the ISO and BIPOC TV and Film and the REMC and AQM—all of the acronyms—came together around Bill C-11. I was also surprised at how much of a voice we can have when we really come together on some key issues.