Docmaker Michael Moore has had a special relationship with the Toronto International Film Festival, dating back to winning the People’s Choice Award for his breakthrough Roger & Me in 1989. So it was only fitting that he would use Toronto as the launch pad for his latest, Captain Mike Across America, which preemed Friday night.

Moore’s so-called ‘secret project’ was shot three years ago and has since sat on the shelf. The film follows him around in the lead-up to the 2004 U.S. elections, as he held speaking engagements at college campuses in the most hotly contested states to encourage the slacker generation to get out and vote, in the hopes of tipping the scales in favor of John Kerry and the Democrats. Well, we all know how that turned out, which probably explains why the director was in no rush to get the film out — until now, with a return to the polls on the horizon next year.

The film digs up plenty of anti-Republican and anti-war sentiment among youth in the Midwest. ‘If you don’t live in L.A., New York, Berkeley or Ann Arbor, and you don’t like what’s going on, you have a lonely feeling sometimes,’ he told the appreciative Toronto audience before the film.

Moore was in good spirits, reporting that he had just learned that Sicko, his indictment of the U.S. health care system, had just become the third-highest grossing documentary of all time. He also occupies the top spot.

‘All that’s left between Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko are those fucking penguins,’ he joked, referring to March of the Penguins, the second-highest grosser.

Ever-gushy about all things Canadian, Moore said he was touched when told that Fahrenheit — highly critical of the Bush administration — had aired on the CBC days before. It has only aired on pay-TV in the U.S.

‘Three years after I made that film, it can be shown on public television in Canada, but not in the U.S.,’ he said.

‘By the way, that’s not an endorsement of the CBC,’ he added with a smile.

Critics who have complained about Moore being too much in front of the camera in his films will be pushed over the edge with his latest, in which he is the central character, appearing before roaring crowds and fawning celebrity ‘opening acts’ including Eddie Vedder, Steve Earle, R.E.M. and Joan Baez, who crowns him as the new Bob Dylan. When asked about the release future of the film, Moore deferred to his distributor, indie kingpin Harvey Weinstein, seated in the crowd.

‘I’m seeing it with you for the first time with an audience,’ Weinstein got up and said. ‘We’re going to sit down with Michael and figure it out.’

Through its soon-to-expire output deal with The Weinstein Company, Alliance Films is handling Captain Mike in Canada, though no theatrical dates have been set.