BCA alums Fernanda Molina and Daria Lavrova took top honours home from North America’s biggest documentary festival
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From classroom project to festival winner, My Body Goes to Work has quickly become one of the documentary world’s most talked-about short films.
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The 12-minute doc – directed by Fernanda Molina and produced by Daria Lavrova as part of their graduating project from Yorkville University’s Bachelor of Creative Arts program – won Best Canadian Short Documentary at the 2026 Hot Docs Festival earlier this month.
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Watch the trailer HERE!
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The film stood out with Hot Docs jurors for its compassionate and unflinching portrayal of a Toronto sex worker navigating the realities of care work and survival.
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“In just 12 minutes, Fernanda Molina Perez Diez crafts an intimate and humanizing portrait of a Toronto sex worker, revealing the complexity behind job titles and underscoring the nature of care work in all its forms,” the jury statement reads. “Raw and observant, the film left the jury in reflection on the everyday realities of sex work, reframing a life too often reduced to a label.”
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For Molina and Lavrova, those words still haven’t fully sunk in. My Body Goes to Work’s big win at Hot Docs sent shockwaves through the small but tight-knit team behind the film – most of them classmates from Yorkville University and its affiliate, Toronto Film School (TFS).
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“We’re still processing, because we weren’t expecting it,” said Molina. “It was a very exciting moment because this was the festival that we wanted to get into. Even when we were shooting, we were visualizing ourselves at Hot Docs.”
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Added Lavrova: “We are still in such shock to this day, because this was our real first film. We know every second of it by heart. Everything in it has an intention behind it. And when you put a project like this out there and then it wins, you just feel like, ‘Okay, we just did something meaningful and the story touched someone’s heart.’ And that’s an incredible feeling.”
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Two Filmmakers, One Vision
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Molina and Lavrova first met in 2021 as classmates in the Film Production program at TFS, where they quickly recognized something in each other.
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“We both saw each other as our biggest competition – but in the best way,” Lavrova said. “Someone who was pushing you to do better.”
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Molina, originally from Mexico City, was drawn to filmmaking through a lifelong love of storytelling and emotional exploration. Lavrova, who came to Canada from Russia, had spent years as a dancer before deciding the stage felt too limiting. Film, she reasoned, offered more.
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Their collaboration grew through TFS thesis projects – trading roles as director and assistant director on each other’s films – before they pursued the BCA pathway at Yorkville University together as part of the 2024 graduating cohort. It was there, through their Grad Project courses at Yorkville, that My Body Goes to Work took shape.
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“This documentary became our first big idea,” said Lavrova. “Fernanda had this idea and she shared it with me, and it just took up the entire space in our hearts and our heads.”
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The Story of Nevaeh
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The film follows Nevaeh, a birth worker by day and a dancer in a strip club by night, as she navigates two very different worlds in which bodies are both judged and celebrated. As she reclaims the beauty and agency of her body, she generously invites viewers to rethink their assumptions about sex, labour, and healing.
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For Molina, the subject was deeply personal and long in the making. Her term three documentary at TFS had also explored sex work in Toronto, and the experience left her convinced there was a larger, richer story to tell.
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“I always had a lot of interest in female sexuality and the ways it’s repressed – the way society, culture, and politics have an opinion on it,” she said. “Sex work is the place where (female sexuality) is stigmatized the most and where it is criminalized. I wanted to explore why.”
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What made Nevaeh’s story particularly compelling was the contrast between her two roles. As Molina explains: “Being a birth worker is seen as very honourable, while being a sex worker is often something viewed as very degrading – and she’s doing both jobs. Both include a lot of emotional labour and bring a lot of benefit to the people she interacts with.”
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The parallels struck Molina as a modern echo of the Madonna-whore complex: one woman, one body, two entirely different social verdicts depending on how that body is used.
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The connection to Nevaeh came through BCA classmate Geo LaForme, who joined the project early in its development phase. After a preliminary meeting over coffee, Molina and Nevaeh clicked immediately – a bond Lavrova attributes to Molina’s approach.
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“She always asked questions that were out of curiosity and out of deep love and understanding for women – just trying to humanize what she does,” Lavrova recalled. “I think Nevaeh felt that Fernanda was sincere with her intentions; that this project was never to create something sensational or shocking.”
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Building that trust was a deliberate, careful process. The team arranged multiple pre-shoot meetings – first with Molina alone, then at Nevaeh’s home, then with the full crew – so that by the time cameras rolled, the relationship felt natural.
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“By the time we were shooting, we already felt very comfortable with each other,” Molina said. “I was actually surprised by how comfortable she felt with us.”
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Nevaeh remained involved in the project throughout post-production, viewing the trailer and a screener of the final cut (which moved her to tears), and ultimately accompanying the film’s crew to the Hot Docs premiere.
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“It was our number one priority that she always knew exactly what we’re doing, and that we didn’t misrepresent her,” Lavrova said. “Every time she would get so emotional. Every time it would be like reliving the experience for the first time.”
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The Hot Docs Experience
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This year’s Hot Docs programmed just over 100 films from nearly 3,000 submissions, making selection into North America’s largest documentary festival a significant achievement in itself.
Winning was something neither Molina nor Lavrova had dared to fully imagine.
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“Hot Docs was always the goal with this project,” Lavrova explained. “We were putting so much work into it, we were betting so much on this festival.”
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When the acceptance email arrived, Lavrova spotted it first – and immediately called Molina, who had by then moved back to Mexico. “She just started jumping up and down,” Lavrova recalled with a laugh. “I was sitting with my hands shaking.”
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At the awards ceremony, the duo sat in stunned silence when their category came up.
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“Our nomination was the first one,” Lavrova recalled. “We had just sat down – and then they said we won. For the rest of the ceremony, we were just looking at each other stunned.”
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The screening itself – on April 25 at the TIFF Lightbox, in front of a sold-out audience – was equally emotional. Molina, Lavrova, and Nevaeh sat together in the dark, holding hands.
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“Our work only feels complete once it’s shared with an audience,” Molina said. “So that moment was like, okay, this is out there. People can watch it.”
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A Team Effort
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My Body Goes to Work was very much a collaborative achievement rooted in the Yorkville and TFS community. In addition to Molina and Lavrova, the team included:
– Denzel Vazquez (Cinematographer/Colorist) – Film Production and BCA alumnus
– Ipek Cenkci (Associate Producer) – Film Production alumnus
– Geo LaForme (Participant Researcher) – BCA alumnus
– Rami Khan (Market Researcher and BTS) – BCA alumnus
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Molina credits her time at both Yorkville and TFS with giving her something more valuable than technical skills: her people.
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“You’re pretty much finding your own crew and your own team when you go to schools like this,” she said. “I’m really grateful for being able to meet Daria and Denzel and Geo and Rami and Ipek – all these people who made this film possible.”
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Lavrova echoed that sentiment, adding that the faculty support they received at both schools extended well beyond graduation.
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“Some of our teachers remained our mentors throughout. Emilia (Davidovic) was supporting us from the beginning – she was even at the festival. Salar (Pashtoonyar) was always so supportive. Sandy (Carson) was very supportive when we were working on this project specifically. Bruno (Lyra) and Adam (Till) always believed in us.”
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For Carson, the chair of Yorkville’s BCA program, the win is a milestone.
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“I am so proud of these students’ achievements. This win is solid proof that what we’re providing through the BCA program is supporting our students getting to the next level, both artistically and professionally,” said Carson, who supported the project through its creative development, noting that the achievement reflects both the calibre of the students and the competitive landscape they succeeded in.
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“As North America’s biggest documentary film festival and industry market, the competition just to get into Hot Docs is incredibly fierce,” he added. “So, this win is a huge honour for our talented grads, and a feather in the cap of the BCA Program.”
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What’s Next
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Molina and Lavrova plan to continue My Body Goes to Work’s festival run, while also exploring distribution possibilities. As for a feature-length expansion – once a goal – they’ve since decided the short stands on its own.
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“We feel like this is a complete story,” said Molina. “We want to put a period on it and explore different themes and different stories in our future documentaries.”
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That future will keep Molina and Lavrova working together. Both are developing new projects centred on women and the choices available to them – a theme that emerged organically from the questions My Body Goes to Work raised.
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“For the longest time, for centuries, women have been deprived of these choices,” said Lavrova. “And so now when we do have them, we want to explore them.”
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The pair also plan to take turns in the director’s and producer’s chairs, each supporting the other.
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“We are a duo. We’re sticking with each other,” said Lavrova. “We are a chosen family. After everything we’ve been through – after school, another school, this project – we just know what to expect from each other.”
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Advice for Aspiring Filmmakers
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For students just starting out in the Film Production program at TFS or the BCA at Yorkville, Molina and Lavrova have clear advice: discover your people, and keep creating with them.
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“Find your team in your classmates and stick with them,” Molina advised. “Collaborate on things that have nothing to do with school. Just keep creating together.”
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Added Lavrova: “Also, don’t be afraid to ask questions. Always be curious and open and kind. That’s what brings more people towards you who want to work together – and so much world opens up.”
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My Body Goes to Work is currently in its festival run. Follow Fernanda Molina and Daria Lavrova for updates on upcoming screenings and future projects.
