‘Frankly, I told colleagues that I could program a whole festival with docs this year,’ enthuses Terry McEvoy, Canadian Images programmer for the Vancouver International Film Festival. ‘That’s how many good ones crossed my desk,’ he adds.

McEvoy estimates that he screened more than 75 feature docs and 60 short to mid-range nonfiction films from across Canada while assembling his program. The industry veteran, who is the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television’s vice-chair, West, admits that he had to make some ‘hard decisions’ to arrive at his final selection of 10 features plus five short and three mid-range documentaries for the Canadian Images program. In addition, three Canadian doc features are also programmed in the ecology-based The Ark: Elements and Animals series.

On tap for Vancouver is a mixed bag of films ranging from The Islands Project, the world premiere of an organic cooking road show starring and directed by celebrity chef Michael Stadtlander, to Suivre Catherine, in which Quebec director Jeanne Crépeau takes the audience on her personal journey to Paris. And Frank Wolf’s Borealis, a true-North adventure tale, covers the filmmaker’s 3,000-kilometer canoe trip through the remote forests of Manitoba and Ontario.

Despite the autobiographical nature of these and other films he selected, McEvoy refuses to find underlying connections between them.

‘I consider it hubris to impose themes on films,’ he says. ‘They [the films] are a herd of cats,’ he continues. ‘And I say that with a great deal of affection. We’re a herd-of-cats country.’

Another world premiere for VIFF is Fierce Light, Velcrow Ripper’s highly anticipated follow-up to his Genie Award-winning feature doc ScaredSacred. Beautifully shot, the film combines once again the filmmaker’s fascination with spirituality and activism.

‘I think this is Velcrow’s most accomplished piece,’ comments McEvoy. ‘He has been working his whole filmmaking career to get to this point.’

In Fierce Light, Ripper travels from India to South Africa to Los Angeles, exploring the intersection between religion and politics. Participating in the film is a full range of activists, from dedicated Indian lawyers and North American journalists to Hollywood eco-believer Daryl Hannah and a South African human-rights-espousing descendent of Mahatma Gandhi.

‘The film is devoid of stridency,’ says McEvoy. ‘Velcrow has always had a compelling message, but this time he’s delivered it in a way that isn’t just going to be ‘preaching to the choir.”

Asked if Fierce Light might be the documentary out of Vancouver to replicate the commercial success of last year’s hit Up the Yangtze, McEvoy hesitates. ‘With my heart, I’d vote for Crépeau’s film. But do I believe that it has a future in the box office? No, I don’t.’

Warming up to his answer, he continues, ‘Fierce Light is a more accomplished film than Yangtze, but you’d expect that because Velcrow is an experienced filmmaker. I’d say that it’s very safe to assume that Fierce Light could be a commercial breakthrough for Velcrow.’

Another personal film chosen by McEvoy is Waiting for Sancho, the first documentary by Cinema Scope editor and VIFF programmer Mark Peranson. It’s a behind-the-scenes, experimental look at the making of Birdsong (El cant dels ocells) by Spanish filmmaker Albert Serra (which premiered in Canada at TIFF).

Also artistic, but in a different way, is a film from Rhombus Media arts performance expert Barbara Willis Sweete (The Firebird, Elizabeth Rex). Her latest, The Young Romantic, profiles Yundi Li, a brilliant Chinese pianist. The film captures Li’s obsession with finding the right Steinway piano to record pieces he’ll play by Prokofiev, orchestrated by legendary conductor Sejii Ozawa, for a Deutsche Gramophone recording.

Much more political is Under the Hood, a Voyage into the World of Torture, which confronts the West’s post-9/11 response to terrorism. Directed by Patricio Henriquez, this National Film Board coproduction looks at the lives of people who have been wrongly accused of sabotage in recent years and how they were victimized in democratic nations.

McEvoy lists three more docs in his program – Scott Smith’s As Slow as Possible, John Walker’s Passage and Nik Sheehan’s Flicker, all of which premiered in Canada last spring at Hot Docs – before offering up a scoop.

‘There is one more film, but I’m not sure if I can call it a doc,’ says the cagey programmer, who directed The True Intrepid, on Canadian spymaster William Stephenson, before becoming involved with VIFF. ‘It involves a guy who buys an old video camera and finds a tape inside it that has someone who looks and sounds a lot like an older John Lennon.’ McEvoy hesitates and asks, ‘Could Lennon be alive and well in northern Ontario?’

Viewers of Peter McNamee’s Let Him Be at VIFF will find out the answer.