The timing could not have been worse. Exactly one day before Hot Docs threw open the doors for its tenth annual fete of documentary filmmaking, the World Health Organization told the entire planet to stay away from SARS-riddled Toronto. Bad news for the city and for the festival, which relies heavily on international deal-making.

‘We saw all but a handful of our international broadcasters cancel at the last minute,’ says exec director Chris McDonald. Fifteen percent fewer delegates turned up and Hot Docs ‘lost a fair number of panelists.’

The fest became a ‘trial by fire’ as McDonald and his crew scrambled to fill gaps in the nine-day schedule, shuffling speakers and guests between events, and hastily repurposing the popular Toronto Documentary Forum as a one-day teleconference. The travel advisory was lifted partway through the fest.

‘We found everybody that did come was very willing to help out, so it wasn’t too difficult to put different people on panels,’ says McDonald, adding that Canadians, independent producers and the general public turned out in strong numbers despite the SARS scare. ‘We’ve learned a fair bit. I don’t know if teleconferencing is the way to go but it was a good exercise in being inventive.’

The conference – during which producers pitched their projects to a panel of Canadian and, via the Internet, international broadcasters – had some audio trouble at first but otherwise went smoothly. Peter Lynch (The Herd, Project Grizzly) and Katerina Cizek (Indian Posse) gave one of the strongest pitches of the morning for their latest, Theatre of War, about the Moscow theatre siege of 2002. Despite the very recent subject matter, it seemed to catch the eye of a rep from History Television, who quipped, ‘Yesterday works for us these days.’

Director Oren Siedler also turned heads with Bruce and Me, the profile of a 64-year-old con man, bank robber and globe-trotting womanizer who just happens to be her father.

Hot Docs keeps track of deals struck through the fest, but will not have any hard numbers until the end of the summer. International deal-making will certainly be down, but many expect that inter-Canadian business will jump. ‘It’s very possible,’ says McDonald. ‘I think the Canadian broadcasters will dig a little deeper in trying to help out the other Canadians. It wouldn’t surprise me.’

The Hot Docs box office actually climbed 30% over that of last year, which McDonald expects will offset any shortfall in registration revenue.

After nine very long days, the festival wrapped with a closing-night awards show at the University of Toronto, where local director John Kastner walked off with $5,000 and the award for best Canadian feature doc for his Rage Against the Darkness, a portrait of two elderly sisters torn apart by illness. Seniors also scored in the best Canadian short- to mid-length category, which went to Carole Laganiere’s The Moon and the Violin, about the elderly residents of a Montreal artists collective.

Montreal’s Eve Lamont won best feature directing for her look at the city’s housing crisis in Squat!, which also scored the fest’s Humanitarian Award. Devouring Buddha, Korbett Matthew’s 17-minute recount of the Khmer Rouge massacres in Cambodia, won best short- to mid-length direction.

U.S. filmmaker Paul Devlin picked up best international feature for Power Trip, his look at an American power company struggling to keep the lights on in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

For all the winners go to the Hot Docs web site at www.hotdocs.ca