From climate anxiety and feminist black metal to Afghan resistance and the war in Gaza, this year’s Nordic-backed docs brought a wide range of urgent, intimate and diverse stories to Toronto.

Hot Docs (23 April-3 May) has unveiled the winners of its 2026 edition, with Marjolein Busstra’s House of Hope taking Best International Feature Documentary and Kim Nguyen’s Saigon Story: Two Shootings in the Forest Kingdom scooping Best Canadian Feature Documentary. In total, 12 awards and more than $67,000 in cash and prizes were handed out in Toronto.

Nordic-backed documentaries, meanwhile, enjoyed a notable presence across the festival’s programme, spanning Special Presentations, International Spectrum, World Showcase, Artscapes, the Persister programme, and the shorts strand.

Among the higher-profile selections was A Fox Under a Pink Moon (Robah ve mah sorti), the Iran-Denmark-France-UK-US co-production by Mehrdad Oskouei and Soraya Akhalaghi. Screening in Special Presentations, the film follows 16 year old Afghan artist Soraya over the course of a five-year escape from Iran to Austria. Combining smartphone footage, animation and sculptures made from found clay, the film reframes displacement through the eyes of a young artist using creativity as both protection and self-definition.

Also in Special Presentations, Poh Si Teng’s American Doctor, co-produced with Denmark’s Elk Films, follows three US doctors working in Gaza as they provide emergency care in hospitals under siege while calling for political accountability. The Danish creative presence includes producer Kirstine Barfod and executive producer Andreas Dalsgaard.

The last doc featured in Special Presentation is Sara Dosa’s Time and Water, a US-Icelandic documentary centred on writer Andri Snær Magnason, whose reflections on family, memory and a dying glacier turn the climate crisis into an existential portrait of a changing homeland.

Finland was represented by Shakiba Adil and Elina Hirvonen’s The Secret Reading Club of Kabul, produced by Yellow Film & TV and co-produced with Norway’s Ten Thousand Images. Following young women secretly reading banned books under Taliban rule, the film was showcased in the Persister programme.

Norway had several entries, including Maja Holand’s Hex, a North American premiere in Artscapes about the feminist black-metal band Witch Club Satan, and Robin Jensen’s world-premiering short Time of Plenty, narrated by Renate Reinsve. Norwegian participation also extended to Hamed Zolfaghari’s International Spectrum title Vanishing Tracks, an Iran-France-Norway-South Korea-Qatar co-production set among a Qashqai nomadic family in Iran.

Finally, Sweden was present through Malin Huber’s co-production role on Dongnan Chen’s Whispers in May, the recent CPH:DOX winner, which screened in World Showcase with its poetic coming-of-age portrait set in China’s Liangshan Mountains.