‘This is a film every Canadian should see right now!’ says Lynne Fernie, programmer of the Canadian Spectrum strand at Hot Docs 2006, referring to Samira Goetschel’s first film, Our Own Private Bin Laden. But she is just as emphatic about the other 22 titles in the program, including 12 features, seven one-hours and three shorts.

After five months poring over 300 entries, Fernie feels entitled to praise her selections from B.C., Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, and to note the prevalence of films by directors based in Canada but whose stories unfold in foreign lands.

‘[Canadians] want to understand the history and the context behind contemporary events. We all need less historical amnesia,’ she says.

Filmmaker Manfred Becker would agree. He says that he immigrated to Canada from Germany as a young man after frustrated attempts to get his father to speak in detail about his experience as a Nazi soldier in the Second World War, adding that he couldn’t ‘live in a [post-war] graveyard.’ He wanted to be rid of the collective guilt and the shame of being associated with atrocities. He tried, until his son Jonas was called a Nazi in a Toronto schoolyard.

It bothered Becker more than his son, who’d developed a keen interest in military strategy. But when the innocent child remarked that, ‘With a little luck, Hitler could have won,’ Becker realized he and his son should talk to his father back in Germany. After History Television’s VP of content Cindy Witten suggested he document the experience and Barna-Alper’s Laszlo Barna came aboard as exec producer, Fatherland was born.

Part home movie, part therapy session, the film is, Becker says, about ‘what it means to be German in the latter part of the 20th century… It’s about a guy who has to sort out his relationship with his son.’

Becker wrote, directed, shot and produced the film. Presold to History, Fatherland ’s other sales are in Barna-Alper’s hands. In addition to its regular Hot Docs screenings, the film is also part of the festival’s Docs in Schools program, launching this year. It’s designed to give high school students in and around Toronto access to free documentary screenings from May 1-5, at the Bloor Cinema, Innis Town Hall and in participating schools.

The fallout from war and imperialism is also germane to Iranian-born Goetschel’s one-hour Our Own Private Bin Laden. Fernie says the film ‘came out of nowhere’ and had her ‘completely riveted.’

Although Goetschel attended NYU film school, she had no interest in documentaries. But on Sept. 11, she gazed in horror as the World Trade Center buildings fell. She felt the collapse of the ‘safe place’ she and her family had built in America – far from Iran, where her father had been murdered during the Islamic revolution. And she was frustrated the media would not adequately explain why Osama Bin Laden’s men slammed those planes into the twin towers.

Her quest for answers led to the U.S.’s foreign policy during the Cold War and to many extraordinary interviews that tell a chilling tale about the roots of Islamic fundamentalism, and about today’s international struggle to control resources and huge profits.

Goetschel doubts she could have made this film if she had stayed in the U.S. But from her Toronto base, she could convince such well-informed sources as Pakistan People’s Party head Benazir Bhutto and former CIA director Stansfield Turner to go on camera.

All along the journey, Goetschel paid for the film with her own money, pension funds and relatives’ money. She had no broadcaster support because they all wanted her to do the film their way, including showing images of Bin Laden, which she didn’t want to do.

Festivals all over Europe accepted the film, but none in the U.S. programmed it, although many asked Goetschel to submit it. ‘Not even underground festivals,’ she adds. She hopes Hot Docs will generate offers from broadcasters, and is happy it will also be included in the fest’s educational curriculum.

Mozart madness

In a lighter vein, veteran arts director Larry Weinstein of Rhombus Media brings Mozartballs to open Canadian Spectrum. With a title that extends Weinstein’s name-and-body-part titling protocol – as in Ravel’s Brain and Beethoven’s Hair – Mozartballs gathers the eclectic stories of people who feel intensely connected to the German composer, whose 250th birthday is celebrated this year.

One woman avers that in December 1984, Mozart’s spirit entered her body and she is him. Meanwhile, a male astronaut carried ‘Mozartkugeln’ or ‘Mozartballs’ – chocolate, ball-shaped treats made in the composer’s hometown of Salzburg – into space, where they can be seen floating in the capsule.

Weinstein hopes CBC will air the film as part of Opening Night next season. ARTE Germany has already aired it, and Rhombus has made many major international sales. Thomas Wallner cowrote with Weinstein, who also produces with Jessica Daniel.

While several other titles – including veteran Shelley Saywell’s Martyr Street, newcomer Greg Hamilton’s Mystic Ball, and Shadow Company by Nick Bicanic and Jason Bourque ­- pick up the Canadians-in-a-foreign-land theme, only one investigates a foreign world without leaving Canada.

In Life Inside Out, first-time feature director Sarah Zammit embarks on a vérité study of a group of female inmates in a federal prison. There, she observes how prison life has evolved since Holly Dale and Janis Cole shot the landmark P4W (1981), and since Canada developed a ‘gender-specific approach to justice for women.’

Peter Starr produces for the National Film Board. The film will have its world premiere at Hot Docs.