Hot Docs Forum Winners Hope Prizes Will Lead to Distribution

Elaine Epstein says that winning Hot Docs Forum’s top First Look prize of Can $20,000 cash for her film “Arrest the Midwife” is a “game changer.”

The project, which has been on a close to year-long hiatus, will now finally be able to resume due to the award.

“The last money we raised was 10 months ago,” Epstein said. “So it’s been a while. We raised money and then things stopped.”

“Arrest the Midwife” was one of 20 projects presented to key funders and decision-makers as well as filmmakers, producers and other observers at the 25th edition of the two-day Forum pitch event.

Produced through Epstein’s Underdog Films (U.S.), with producer Robin Hessman and executive producer Ruth Ann Harnisch, the doc chronicles the arrest of three midwives serving Amish and Mennonite communities. When a Mennonite baby died after being attended to by a homebirth midwife, an unprecedented legal drama ensued. One midwife was charged with 95 felony charges, including criminally negligent homicide. Shortly after, two other midwives were arrested and similarly charged. In the film, Epstein follows an unlikely group of activists who fight for freedom of choice in birthing rights.

“It’s a difficult funding landscape right now,” said Hessman. “I’ve been in this business for 30 years and I have not quite seen it like this. With Participant closing down, the Threshold Foundation’s documentary fund closing and and HBO going through its own turmoil, the funding landscape has changed so much in so many significant ways.”

Hessman said the money from Hot Docs will go toward “paying things that have not been paid.”

“Winning this prize is the leg up we need right now,” Epstein said.

Hessman added:  “We’ve had some great conversations while we have been at Hot Doc and have lined up some promising meetings. We had one conversation already with a European channel who said that they were interested. So, a lot of groundwork has been done.”

Currently in post production, “Arrest the Midwife” is being supported by PBS’s Independent Television Service (ITVS). In 2022 Epstein received an ITVS subgrant for $325,000. That same year “Arrest the Midwife” garnered the Miller/Packan Documentary Film Fund grant and the IDA Enterprise documentary production grant.

Epstein, a South African filmmaker currently based in New York, said that “Arrest the Midwife” takes a completely different angle on the issue of reproductive rights, which has been a topic of several recent documentaries including “The Janes” and “Aftershock.”

“We have a film about reproductive rights, bodily autonomy and women’s rights at a time when all three are getting rolled back,” Epstein said. “While abortion is the major issue and there are a lot of abortion stories out there, we have a fresh perspective on the issue that maybe can re-energize the conversation.”

Hessman explained that the doc examines the hot button issue not through the traditional lens of liberal progressive women fighting for abortion rights, but instead “through the gaze of religious, conservative women fighting for the right to choose where, how and with whom to birth their babies.”

Fellow Hot Docs Forum winner Juanjo Pereira, who received the First Look third prize of Can. $5,000, is hoping that the win will help lead to distribution for his project “Under the Flags, the Sun.”

About Paraguay’s untold history,  “Under the Flags, the Sun” is told using film material that Pereira discovered around the world. The film is in post production.

“It’s really important for Paraguay and also for Latin America that we won this prize,” said Pereira. “The money will be put mostly toward paying for licensing archives.”

Ngardy Conteh George’s “This Land of Ours” garnered this year’s CMF-Hot Docs Forum Canadian Pitch Prize for Can. $10,000. The feature-length doc depicts the realities of the people of Barbuda, a small island in the Caribbean and the rebuilding process after Hurricane Irma’s destruction.

Conteh George said that she will use Hot Docs’ prize money toward production.

“I’m currently filming,” she said. “But the story is unfolding in real life and real time, so there are things that are happening on the ground in Barbuda. This money allows me to hop on a plane and go there and keep filming as needed.”

It has been 12 years since Conteh George pitched her first documentary feature “The Flying Stars.” She is hoping that her Hot Docs win will help “This Land of Ours” find a home. 

“One of the benefits of pitching at the Forum and winning a prize here is that it helps you seal the deal with the broadcasters and the funders,” Conteh George said. “It puts you at the top of the pile for decision makers to make that decision because you have been validated by Hot Docs.”