Despite an edition that saw a significant upturn in attendance, an appearance by legendary filmmaker Warner Herzog, a first-time Canadian director winning one of the top prizes, and 100 films to choose from, buyer reaction was mixed at the 2006 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

‘There is nothing at this point that we’re looking to acquire, but we’re still catching up,’ said Michael Baker, director of acquisitions and development for ThinkFilm, near the end of the fest. ‘We haven’t yet found something that is exactly right for us.’

ThinkFilm launched its new U.S.-produced doc Fuck – looking at the genesis and impact of the titular expletive – at the festival, as it did with Oscar nominee Murderball last year.

Glen Wood, head of home video distribution at Mongrel Media, reports a more fruitful experience and says he is interested in OilCrash, a Swiss film about the price of oil, and Shadow Company, by Canadians Nick Bicanic and Jason Bourque, about companies benefiting from the war in Iraq. Wood agrees with Baker, however, that there are too many films about Iraq on the market.

The doc festival wrapped after 10 days in Toronto on May 7. Industry events included various producer seminars and early morning doc-focused panels branded Coffee Talk, but the marquee event was the Toronto Documentary Forum, where selected filmmakers pitched their work to a panel of international broadcast and distribution reps.

‘[The TDF] did a great job of bringing top-notch projects to the table,’ says Lynn Kirby, SVP, original programming and development for the Sundance Channel in New York, who was among the broadcaster reps. Kirby would not offer details, but says she has about six projects to follow up on based on what she heard at the forum.

Of the eight projects pitched by Canadians at the TDF on May 3 and 4, perhaps the most praised was Up The Yangtze!, from director Mila Aung-Thwin, producer John Christou, and Catherine Olsen, commissioning editor and producer for CBC’s The Passionate Eye. It is about the relocation of Chinese villagers along the Yangtze River – an area being built up for tourism purposes – and looks at both sides of the issue.

‘Often with pitches we get, [the filmmakers] forget that life is 360 degrees,’ said Karen O’Connor of the BBC after the pitch. Ralf Quibeldey of ARD NDR in Hamburg added, ‘I like this project so much, I’d broadcast the trailer.’

Veteran docmaker Allan King didn’t enjoy the same unanimous praise for his pitch for At Home in the Hood, looking at racism through the eyes of inner-city youths. Presenting with TVOntario head Rudy Buttignol, King could not say where or how his film would end. CNN’s Jennifer L. Hyde liked the ‘feeling of universality’ in the material for her channel, but John Moser of Showtime Networks summed up the feeling of many at the table who wanted a clearer idea of where the storyline was going before officially expressing interest.

This was Moser’s first trip to the TDF. Although nothing he saw at Hot Docs immediately proved a good fit for Showtime, he is glad he made the trip from New York.

‘We’re new to the documentary game as far as original documentaries are concerned,’ he says, ‘so it was good to meet with a lot of the international commissioning editors and get to know them a bit and how they work.’

Producer Laszlo Barna, director Barry Stephens and CBC’s Jerry McIntosh pitched Offspring – The Film, a sequel to 2002’s one-hour TV doc Offspring, which took Stephens on an unsuccessful search for his sperm-donor father. Stephens has since located his father and shot their meeting, making the film equal parts personal journey and a look at genetic technological advancements.

CNN’s Hyde liked the mix of ethical, personal and emotional issues the film offers, though Christian Baute of European distributor Celluloid Dreams Productions does not see the film filling theaters.

At the closing awards, Ben Hopkins’ 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep – about the nomadic Kirghiz tribe in Central Asia who have been exiled to Turkey for almost 30 years – won the coveted best international feature prize, while Shelley Saywell’s doc Martyr Street, about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, took the best Canadian feature doc award. Both filmmakers received $5,000.

The special jury prize for best Canadian feature went to rookie helmer Greg Hamilton’s Mystic Ball – about chinlone, the dance-like national sport of Myanmar. Mystic placed second on the audience favorites list this year, behind Lion in the House, a four-hour U.S. title about kids with cancer that generated buzz.

Quebec’s Guylaine Dionne and Winnipeg’s Sean Garrity won the Don Haig Award and Don Haig special jury prize, respectively. Named for the late, Oscar-winning producer, the awards go to young filmmakers for their exemplary body of work in both fiction and nonfiction, and were handed out at the fest for the first time.

Following the Rendezvous program, where docmakers with projects in development pitched to broadcasting reps, Where Shall I Go? by Dominique Darmon won the OMNI Prize for best third-language/ethno-cultural pitch, while Ramona Persaud took home the CBC Newsworld camera prize for the best CBC pitch, bringing her a $10,000 camera rental package.

‘I gave CTV and CBC my 10-minute clip and figured at least I’d get some feedback and maybe a referral to talk to someone else,’ Persaud says. ‘I didn’t even know there were awards attached.’

But the big draw of the Hot Docs awards was German director Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man), who received an outstanding achievement award. Herzog participated in an onstage discussion of his work on May 6, and the fest offered a five-film retrospective.

According to executive director Chris McDonald, the audience surpassed 50,000 this year, up from 41,000 in 2005. Within that number are 1,800 international industry delegates, 250 film buyers among them. McDonald credits multiple screenings of every title and the overall strength of the 101-film lineup for the audience boost.

Based on this year’s success, McDonald says Hot Docs will have to expand its venues for 2007.

www.hotdocs.ca