How to Fund and Finish a Compelling Documentary

Please come with a documentary idea you're working on.

Participants will go through funding options within Canada by exploring grants, public funding bodies, broadcasters, and alternative financing paths available to documentary filmmakers at different stages of their careers. You’ll learn how to schedule your filming effectively by designing a realistic production timeline, balancing creative and logistical demands, and avoiding common scheduling pitfalls that can stall a project. Finally you’ll come to understand how to find collaborators and broadcast partners by discovering strategies for connecting with producers, editors, broadcasters, and platforms that can help bring your documentary to life.

The workshop is led by Guillaume Carlier, of Kino Sum Productions, who is an experienced documentary filmmaker with extensive knowledge of developing, financing, and completing documentary projects. Guillaume brings real-world insight into what decision-makers look for and how filmmakers can position their work for success.

Whether you’re in early development or trying to push a project across the finish line, this workshop will give you concrete tools, actionable guidance, and a clearer path forward. Great for aspiring and emerging documentary filmmakers, independent creators, journalists, and storytellers interested in non-fiction work.

This event is sponsored by the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers. CSIF was founded in 1978 by a collective of twelve filmmakers who saw the growing need for film resources and film equipment on the traditional Treaty 7 territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, the Métis Nation (Region 3), also known as Calgary, Alberta. Now over 40 years later we are an integral part of the growing cultural community in Calgary and are excited about new collaborations and opportunities.

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