Hot Docs’ Toronto Documentary Forum concluded with Canwest commissioning editor Sara Jane Flynn handing the $40,000 prize for best Canadian pitch to White Pine Pictures for its project The Team.

In his pitch, veteran producer Peter Raymont (Shake Hands with the Devil, The Border) promised that The Team would be ‘a refreshing film shot in Africa without the usual stereotypes: no skulls, no starving children with flies in their eyes, no passive victims and no white savior.’

The entertaining trailer directed by Patrick Reed (Triage: Dr. James Orbinski’s Humanitarian Dilemma) set out the doc’s unusual premise. In order to reduce ongoing tribal tensions in Kenya, a TV soap has been created about a fictional soccer team made up of members of all ethnic sides of the country. Reed and Raymont’s doc will cover the making of the show and the effect it has on civil strife in the east African country and its capital, Nairobi.