Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival has announced that multi-award winner Stanley Nelson will be the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award during this year’s Festival, recognizing his enduring contribution to the documentary form.

Hot Docs will also pay tribute to Raymonde Provencher with their annual Focus On program, which showcases the work of a significant Canadian filmmaker.

Combining compelling narratives with rich and deeply researched historical detail, Stanley Nelson’s films have shone new light on both familiar and under-explored aspects of the American past. His 2003 film The Murder of Emmett Till, about the brutal killing of a fourteen-year-old African American boy in Mississippi in 1955, received the Sundance Special Jury Prize that year, and his latest film, Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, premiered at Sundance in 2019, marking Nelson’s tenth premiere at the prestigious festival in 20 years, the most of any documentary filmmaker.

Committed to uncovering stories about human rights and social injustice issues throughout the world, Raymonde Provencher began to devote most of her time to scriptwriting and directing in 2000. She has had a prolific career thus far. Most recently in 2009, she co-produced with the NFB Grace, Milly, Lucy…Child Soldiers, which tackles the painful tragedy of children forcibly recruited by rebel troops in Uganda. In 2012 and 2015, she directed and produced two films, Crime without honour and Café Désirs, and in 2017 presented Torn Apart, a powerful film about forced marriages, which still exist in Quebec.

Be sure to get tickets for the retrospectives of Nelson and Provencher’s work at Hot Docs 2020 running from April 30 to May 10.