The global documentary industry is more than keeping pace with Hot Docs’ growing audiences.

Fest executive director Chris McDonald expects 500 foreign delegates this year. Nearly 100 will be coming from Brazil, Italy and Germany – the three countries featured in Hot Docs’ new International Co-Production Day. The rest, including producers, filmmakers and broadcasters from the likes of the Sundance Channel, Britain’s Channel Four, TV2 Danmark, Australia’s SBS and ARTE France – will attend the conference and market, with special attention paid to the 8th annual Toronto Documentary Forum pitch fest.

International Co-Production Day (Monday, April 23) will feature presentations from the three nations, all official signatories of bilateral agreements with Canada.

‘The whole day focuses on producers,’ comments TDF director Michaelle McLean. ‘What are their real experiences? It’s not just what the formal agreement says. What’s it like in the trenches?’

The presentations will be followed by case studies of two recent coproductions, both successful past TDF pitches: Moebius Redux, about acclaimed comic strip artist Jean Giraud, produced by Bart Simpson of St. John’s Morag Loves Company and Germany’s Avanti Media; and Hitler’s Museum, about Nazi art thefts, coproduced by Germany’s Ottonia Media and Films à Trois, based in Paris and Toronto.

International Co-Production Day will conclude with producer-to-producer meetings, which McLean hopes will lead to ‘important conversations throughout the week,’ leading to the TDF.

Taking place April 25-26, the forum presents 29 projects this year, which will be pitched to an audience of documentary colleagues including financiers from such stations as ZDF-ARTE, HBO, TVOntario and the BBC. In a strictly timed format, pitching teams are allowed seven minutes to sell their project, followed by an eight-minute period when broadcasters query and respond to the presentation.

Six Canadian teams, led by producers ranging from veteran Ron Mann to relative newcomer Tina Hahn, will be entering the TDF’s arena.

The pitches, a truly mixed bag, include: How to Start Your Own Country, a study of micro-nations by Jody Shapiro; Mary Armstrong’s It’s the Crude, Dude, an investigation into the oil industry, based on Linda McQuaig’s bestseller; Inventing the Future, which proposes that little-known scientist John Vincent Atanasoff is actually the father of the computer, by Mila Aung-Thwin and John Christou; Suzanne Chisholm’s Saving Luna, about the Vancouver Island whale and related loggers, natives and fishermen; Mann’s Examined Life, about contemporary philosophers; and Hahn’s For the Love of Shakespeare, about teaching the Bard in China.

Meanwhile, Doc Lab returns for its second edition, this time under the mentorship of National Film Board producer Gerry Flahive (Manufactured Landscapes, McLuhan’s Wake). Flahive was a guest lecturer at last year’s Lab and found the experience rewarding.

‘It’s quite frank. You’re dealing with a small group of filmmakers, all of whom have a track record of making docs. Their questions are on the level of, ‘A commissioning editor didn’t like my rough cut. What should I do?”

Flahive says he is organizing the curriculum from the inside out.

‘All of the participants were asked to come up with five burning questions they wanted answered. We’ve come up with their common areas of concern,’ he explains.

Workshops will focus on such topics as documentary ethics, the essay film and how to access difficult subjects. Leaders for the Lab include legendary filmmaker Les Blank (Burden of Dreams), Jennifer Fox (An American Love Story) and Michael Skolnik (Without the King). Participants range from Toronto locals Eric Geringas and Kathleen Mullen to Rajesh Thind of London, Marko Popovic of Belgrade and Frank Poulsen of Copenhagen.