Hot Docs Fest Explores Selling Cinema to Ease Financial Crunch

The Hot Docs Canadian Documentary Festival, North America’s largest, is exploring the sale of its flagship Toronto cinema.

On Thursday, fest organizers said the 32nd annual Hot Docs Festival will take place April 24 to May 4, 2025 in Toronto. But to ensure its future amid financial woes, the festival has identified its year-round ownership of the Hot Docs Cinema as the main cause of two years of crippling operating deficits.

“As part of its longer-term rebuilding strategy, Hot Docs has decided to seek a new owner for its cinema at 506 Bloor West and secure a lease-back arrangement that will allow programming at the cinema to continue,” the festival said in a statement on Thursday.

Hot Docs is turning to asset sales after deep cost-cutting and job cuts, a slew of executive exits, including from the boardroom, and the Hot Docs Theatre on Bloor Street being shuttered in June 2024. The cinema reopened in late September for third party rentals, and fest organizers said regular Hot Docs programming will resume on Dec. 4, 2024 at the downtown theater ahead of a planned 32nd edition of the annual documentary festival in spring 2025.

Hot Docs, led by interim executive director Janice Dawe, is also looking for a permanent top exec after president Marie Nelson — the former ABC News and Disney executive who took the helm in June 2023 — left the organization in July 2024 after a chaotic 31st edition. The Canadian festival said programming director Heather Haynes will lead the curation of around 100 documentaries for the planned 32nd edition.

But there’s no word on other programmers for Hot Docs after artistic director Hussain Currimbhoy and 10 programmers left the festival’s organizing team ahead of the 2024 annual festival in Toronto. Hot Docs also dramatically scaled back its board of directors in response to what the festival at the time said was a post-pandemic financial distress at the Toronto organization.