The Toronto Documentary Forum got off to a heavy start this year, opening with pitches about state-sponsored assassination, crippling poverty, life in Afghanistan and a submarine full of drowned Russian sailors who, so the proposed story goes, were sent to the bottom of the ocean by a U.S. submarine and left there to die for the sake of Vladimir Putin’s political career.

Serious stuff, and a lot to deal with at 9:30 in the morning for all of us fainthearted media reporters.

And although the mood eventually lightened up – moving on to the history of ice cream, a Brazilian music festival and the comic foibles of the Russian hockey scene – the many ideas put forth at the two-day pitch session had a harder than usual time connecting with the two dozen commissioning editors who, for two days during the recent Hot Docs festival, sat in judgement on pitches from 38 filmmaking teams.

The TDF selection was ‘good, solid but not inspired,’ says Michael Burns of the Documentary Channel. ‘What you really want to see are films that make some interesting connection between us and the world’ – such as Spellbound, The Last Victory or My Architect, he says – ‘there was a little less of that this year. There weren’t many that truly made you go ‘Wow. I have to have that.’ I’d liked to have seen more conceptual films as opposed to, say, Marked for Death.’

Marked, from local producer Ed Barreveld (Shipbreakers) and director Tim Wolochatiuk (Counter Force), was among the first projects pitched at TDF and drew strong, mixed reactions from the table. Wolochatiuk wants to follow the planning and assassination of some unnamed, unlucky Palestinian leader by Israel forces, much like what recently happened to Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin.

Wolochatiuk seems to have surprisingly free access to the secrets of the Israeli military, which raised questions and interest from some ‘casters, including CNN and Discovery Channel, but others were turned off, one broadcaster later denouncing it as a ‘snuff film.’

Other films drew mixed results, the most obvious divide being between the U.S. and Europe, according to Bravo!’s Charlotte Engel, citing the ‘bombed’ pitch for Waiting to Inhale, about the legalization of marijuana. The Sundance-backed project drew some stateside interest but was dismissed as old news by the rest of the world.

Local legend Allan King, however, reportedly blew away the crowd on Thursday with his latest, Dementia, and Nick de Pencier got drew strong interest to his Hockey Nomad – Into Russia, a follow-up to last year’s Gemini-nominated doc for CBC Newsworld.

Each team had seven minutes to state their case and usually showed clips or teasers on giant screens mounted at either end of the stately University of Toronto hall. Some ‘casters moved to snap up Gelato, the aforementioned ice cream doc from the Netherlands, solely on the strength of its teaser.

But despite the elaborate, eager-to-please pitches, docmakers on the whole seemed less interested in TV than usual this year, having become more keen on theatrical releases and the prospect of following in the mass-appeal success of recent films such as The Corporation and Bowling for Columbine. More than one exec at the table remarked that the TDF teams seemed to view ‘casters as sources of income on the road to theatrical release, not as exhibitors, which has traditionally been the case.

‘They’re extremely mindful of theatrical,’ says Burns.

Rudy Buttignol of TVOntario agrees that docmakers increasingly look to TV as a source of income, which can conflict with the mandates of some ‘casters and deflate the potential of events such as the TDF. ‘It’s a perfect time for theatrical, but we don’t necessarily want to pay for it,’ he says.

Buttignol adds, ‘What I find useful is to see somebody rise above the noise level, to find the spark of an idea from an unknown source and nurture it.’ He might not buy what’s being pitched, but he’ll remember the names for next time.

-www.hotdocs.ca