Attendance was up again at Hot Doc this year, which, according to organizers, saw a 25% increase in public attendance, setting a new record at 85,000. The Toronto-based documentary festival, which wrapped its 15th installment over the weekend, also saw a modest uptick among buyers and sellers, with some 2,210 industry reps coming through its doors.

‘The success of this year’s festival is a testament to our audiences,’ said Hot Docs boss Chris McDonald in a statement. ‘Their passion for docs and investment in the festival is inspiring. Filmmakers love screening their work in this city.’

Ballots cast by attendees handed the festival’s Audience Award to Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai, a doc by U.S. directors Lisa Merton and Alan Dater about the Nobel laureate’s influence on environmental and human rights issues in Kenya.

Audience ballots also gave high marks to titles including Planet B-Boy by Benson Lee and festival opener Anvil! The Story of Anvil from director Sacha Gervasi.

Directors Pierre Mignault and Hélène Magny won the CIDA prize for best Canadian doc on international development for their Shock Waves, about the impact of community radio in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The festival’s juried awards were handed out Friday night, with $5,000 and best international feature going to The English Surgeon, director Geoffrey Smith’s story of a British brain surgeon’s work in the Ukraine.

‘Polished and shameless,’ said the jury in its notes, ‘in the best sense of combining two seemingly contradictory elements and shaping them into a satisfying and penetrating whole…as one juror noted, this film has everything.’

The special jury prize for an international feature went to Israel’s To See If I’m Smiling, from director/producer Tamar Yarom.

Best Canadian feature went to Junior by directors Isabelle Lavigne and Stéphane Thibault, a behind-the-scenes look at the pressures facing junior hockey players in small-town Quebec. The special jury prize for best Canadian doc went to Nik Sheehan’s FLicKeR.

Other wins at the fest: best short doc went to The Apology Line from James Lees, while best mid-length honors went to It’s Always Too Late for Freedom, by Iranian filmmaker Mehrdad Oskouei. Yung Chang of Up the Yangtze scored $10,000 and the Don Haig award for bridging fiction and nonfiction; doc pioneer Richard Leacock took the outstanding achievement award; and Toronto’s Elizabeth Lazebnik won $5,000 and the Lindalee Tracey award.

The new emerging artist award went to Bulgarian director Boris Despodov on the strength of Corridor #8. The jury noted it ‘must have set a new record for consensus — it was pretty much immediate. We agreed right away. This film is gorgeous, hilarious, enlightening and irresistible.’