Photo by Thomas Kim, courtesy of Hot Docs.
On May 5th, Hot Docs audiences voted PREY as the most popular Canadian Feature film at this year’s festival. The coveted Rogers Audience Award comes with a $50,000 cheque for PREY Director Matt Gallagher & Producer Cornelia Principe.
“PREY is a documentary designed to place the audience in the jury room of a landmark clergy sex abuse court case that took place in 2018. Winning this award from a voting audience will hopefully send a message to the church and their lawyers that the public needs to see change happen now.” - Matt Gallagher, Director PREY
In the closing awards ceremony, PREY was also awarded a special Jury prize from Hot Docs . This prize was sponsored by the Director’s Guild of Canada and comes with an award of $5,000. The international jury of filmmakers that selected PREY for this award wrote: “This prize goes to a film with extraordinary access and a masterful edit, which was deliberate and exacting. The filmmaker had us in their grip from the first moment, leaving us with a heightened understanding of the lasting damage on innocent lives that can never be atoned for.”- Hot Docs 2019 Jury