Hot Docs Award for Best International Feature Documentary

The Hot Docs Award for Best International Feature Documentary is an annual Canadian film award, presented by the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival to the film selected by jury members as the year's best international feature film in the festival program. The award was presented for the first time in 1998; prior to that year, awards were presented in various genre categories, but no special distinction between Canadian and international films was presented.

The award jury also presents a Special Jury Prize to a second film besides the primary winner.

The award is an Academy Award qualifying prize, meaning that a winner of the award is automatically eligible to be submitted for Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film consideration.^[1]

Winners

Best International Documentary Feature

Year	Film	Filmmaker(s)	Ref
1998	In My Father's House	Fatima Jebli Ouzzani	[2]
	Wasteland (Auf Der Kippe)	Andre Schwartz
1999	A Murder in Abidjan (Un crime à Abidjan)	Mosco Boucoult	[3]
2000	Godard on TV (Godard à la télé)	Michel Royer	[4]
	Long Night's Journey Into Day	Deborah Hoffmann, Frances Reid
2001	Southern Comfort  Gold	Kate Davis	[5]
	100 Per Cent White  Silver	Leo Regan
2002	All About My Father (Alt om min far)	Even Benestad	[6]
2003	Power Trip	Paul Devlin	[7]
2004	Checkpoint (Machssomim)	Yoav Shamir	[8]
2005	Street Fight	Marshall Curry	[9]
2006	37 Uses for a Dead Sheep	Ben Hopkins	[10]
2007	Losers and Winners	Ulrike Franke, Michael Loeken	[11]
2008	The English Surgeon	Geoffrey Smith	[12]
2009	One Man Village	Simon El Habre	[13]
2010	A Film Unfinished (Shtikat haArkhion)	Yael Hersonski	[14]
2011	Dragonslayer	Tristan Patterson	[15]
2012	Call Me Kuchu	Malika Zouhali-Worrall, Katherine Fairfax Wright	[16]
2013	Dragon Girls (Drachenmädchen)	Inigo Westmeier	[17]
2014	Waiting for August	Teodora Ana Mihai	[18]
2015	The Closer We Get	Karen Guthrie	[19]
2016	Brothers (Brødre)	Aslaug Holm	[20]
2017	The Other Side of the Wall	Pau Ortiz	[21]
2018	We Could Be Heroes	Hind Bensari	[22]
2019	Hope Frozen	Pailin Wedel	[23]
2020	Stray	Elizabeth Lo	[24]
2021	Ostrov: Lost Island	Svetlana Rodina, Laurent Stoop	[25]
2022	Blue Island	Chan Tze-woon	[26]
2023	The Mountains (Bjergene)	Christian Einshøj	[27]
2024	Farming the Revolution	Nishta Jain	[28]
2025	I, Poppy	Vivek Chaudhary	[1]

Special Jury Prize

Year	Film	Filmmaker(s)	Ref
2005	The Swenkas	Jeppe Rønde	[9]
2006	My Grandmother's House (La casa de mi abuela)	Adán Aliaga	[10]
2007	Without the King	Michael Skolnik	[11]
2008	To See If I'm Smiling	Tamar Yarom	[12]
2009	Cooking History	Peter Kerekes	[13]
2010	The Oath	Laura Poitras	[14]
2011	The Castle (Il Castello)	Massimo D'Anolfi, Martina Parenti	[15]
2012	The Law in These Parts (Shilton Ha Chok)	Ra'anan Alexandrowicz	[16]
2013	Cloudy Mountain	Zhu Yu	[17]
2014	Walking Under Water	Eliza Kubarska	[18]
2015	The Living Fire (Жива ватра)	Ostap Kostyuk	[19]
2016	God Knows Where I Am	Jedd Wider, Todd Wider	[20]
2017	A Cambodian Spring	Christopher Kelly	[21]
2018	Whispering Truth to Power	Shameela Seedat	[22]
	Wind of Swabia	Corrado Punzi
2019	For Sama	Waad Al-Kateab, Edward Watts	[23]
2020	499	Rodrigo Reyes	[24]
2021	School of Hope	Mohamed El Aboudi	[25]
2022	The Wind Blows the Border	Laura Faerman, Marina Weis	[26]
2023	Name Me Lawand	Edward Lovelace	[27]
2024	Death of a Saint	Patricia Bbaale Bandak	[28]
2025	River of Grass	Sasha Wortzel	[1]