Hot Docs 2024: Behind the super-producing powers of Canada’s documentary titan Ina Fichman

Open this photo in gallery:

Want to hear a wild, true story? There’s this couple, Alan and Adrianne, who are so in love with their love for one another, they build an elaborate, kitsch-filled castle in Savanna, Ill., and after she dies he misses her so much he hires actors to stage musical re-enactments of their relationship. Or get this, there are freedivers who plunge 80-plus vertical metres into solid black seas, slowing their hearts nearly to a stop, chasing enlightenment but risking death. And what about the international fossil hunters who, legally and illegally, scour Mongolia, Morocco and Montana in search of dinosaur bones they then sell for millions of dollars?

Want to hear another amazing story? All three of those documentaries, which are screening in Toronto at this year’s Hot Docs Festival – Adrianne and the Castle, directed by Shannon Walsh; 7 Beats Per Minute, directed by Yuqi Kang; and The Bones, directed by Jeremy Xido – were produced by the same Canadian woman, Ina Fichman. The very same Ina Fichman whom Steven Spielberg fan-boyed over at the Oscar nominees’ luncheon in 2023, when she was nominated for producing Sara Dosa’s documentary Fire of Love, about married volcanologists who died together in an eruption.

What makes the Montreal-born Fichman the producer that directors are so desperate to work with, they even pitch her via WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger? (She prefers a proper e-mail, thanks. About 10 per cent catch her eye enough to follow up.) The answer lies in the name of her company, Intuitive Pictures.

“My superpower is being able to see a director’s vision – both the fascinating story they’ve found, and what they want to do with it – and stick to it,” Fichman said this week on a video call outside her veterinarian’s office (her puppy Daisy had a cough) in Los Angeles, where she lives part of every year.

“The ultimate job of a producer is to buy into the vision of the director, because you’re the one who has to help them realize it. Taking the time to understand what the story and the style are, and figuring out how to convey that to the filmmaking team, my partners, my buyers. Being able to say, ‘This is the film,’ even when others are saying, ‘No, it should be this or that.’ And not walking away or panicking when unexpected things happen. Because they will.”

It doesn’t hurt that after producing documentaries for nearly 30 years, Fichman can immediately envision a film’s marketing campaign, including which financers and funding agencies in her stuffed Rolodex she should pitch to. (She co-founded Montreal Women in Film, sits on the boards of Hot Docs, DOC Quebec and the Canadian Film and Media Production Association, and is an unflagging attendee at film markets, festivals and events.) “I understand why audiences and buyers would be interested in this story at this time,” she says. “I have a good nose for what the market wants.”

She likes to get involved early in a project, when everyone’s hair is on fire with enthusiasm, and help them drill into what the film is about. Adrianne and the Castle, for example, is a queer hetero tale of a woman who looks like Divine and the submissive man who idolizes her, but Fichman sold it to CBC as a relatable story of love and grief. As for The Bones, Fichman met its director, who is Romanian, in LA. He’d shot “some incredible footage in Mongolia, and he had a wonderful character, a female paleontologist who was fighting the good fight,” she says. “But now what? He wasn’t the first director I’ve met who didn’t know what to do next.”

Fichman did. She pitched The Bones at a Hot Docs forum as “a really accessible film about contemporary issues, colonialism and repatriation, whether that’s art or archeology. Plus, dinosaurs!” She got Crave on board, then brought on a German producer friend, who scored European financing. She knows which of her many contacts to screen a given film, and she knows how to stay in an editing room until the thing gels.

Although she never went to film school, Fichman was always into storytelling. In the early 1980s, as a journalism student at Carlton, she produced radio documentaries. She landed a job at CBC TV in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, N.L., reporting in small communities via helicopter and prop plane. She returned to Montreal and CBC radio for a few years; then moved into producing: kids’ television, independent films. She directed two documentaries – one about a Yiddish theatre group in the Soviet Union, another about the Quebecois Jewish community – but realized she preferred producing, “believe it or not, even raising the money.”

The nurturing side of her job also appeals to Fichman, mother to a grown son. When she met 7 Beats director Kang, “Yuqi had a strong vision and some magnificent underwater footage, but she needed support,” Fichman says. The main subject of the film, Jessea Yu, was making a second attempt at a freedive that had almost killed her. “Jessea was vulnerable, and her relationship with Yuqi was beautiful but complex. As are most filmmaker/subject relationships. I knew we had to provide mental health support for both of them. A good producer understands what a filmmaker needs as they go through the difficult process of creation, and that’s a lot more than just 20 shooting days.”

Although the behind-the-scenes turmoil at Hot Docs concerns Fichman, she believes the brand is too respected to fail. In addition to screening three films, she’s also pitching one: Ba’s Book, directed by Ashley Da-Le Duong, whose father wrote a memoir for her about his experiences in the Vietnam War and Iranian Revolution. “It’s such an interesting way of dealing with memory and intergenerational trauma,” Fichman says. “So many family histories are never talked about.”

Scoring distribution for her documentaries is never easy, but “I never give up.” She keeps a hawk’s eye on the market: “For a while it was all about the streamers, but now that they’re doing fewer documentaries, we’re back to public broadcasters.” She crafts a bespoke distribution plan for every film – community screenings, impact campaigns. “At the end of the day, what we want most is for audiences to see our films.

“And audiences want to see them,” she continues. “Documentary filmmakers are doing wonderful, innovative, creative work, blowing up the three-act structure, adding animation, working in hybrid forms. Think about Four Daughters,” which includes actors. “It’s so exciting.”

Fichman feels lucky to work in the Canadian system, “even with its problems. It’s tremendously rich. Not just in terms of financing and broadcasters, but talent, too. We’ve created a wonderful community of documentarians who are really stepping up to the plate.”

So what does Canada need to do differently? “More money and infrastructure for documentaries, in both production and distribution,” Fichman replies. “Hello? What else would I say?”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to note that Ina Fichman is also on the board of Hot Docs.

Sign up for The Globe’s arts and lifestyle newsletters for more news, columns and advice in your inbox.