Entering its sixth year, Hot Docs is shifting its industry focus to a broader mandate, hoping to attract a wide public audience and lure more international filmmakers and broadcast executives to the event.

‘Toronto has a very big appetite for festivals,’ says Chris McDonald, Hot Docs’ new ceo. ‘The Toronto International Film Festival helped establish Toronto as a cinephile capital of the world. We would like to do the same thing for the documentary.’

This marks the first time since 1994 that the festival has hired a full-time, year-round ceo. Says McDonald, a former Canadian Film Centre development director: ‘This year marks the first year of a five-year plan to grow the festival.’

The desire to steer Hot Docs in the direction of a larger festival of international scale comes not just from a shared enthusiasm for documentaries, says McDonald, but corresponds with the rapid expansion on the Canadian documentary scene itself.

‘Hot Docs’ growth has paralleled the growth we’ve seen in the industry and we hope to provide a venue to screen and award documentary filmmaking,’ he says.

‘Festivals play an important part in the maturity and development of an industry.’

A recent report on Canada’s documentary industry, The Future of a Canadian Tradition, found there has been a growth of 270% in documentary production since 1995. But ‘the explosion has been in documentaries that are industrial rather than an increase in high-profile, hard-hitting, social-issue-type films,’ says the report’s author Barri Cohen, who will moderate an industry panel on docusoaps.

McDonald says the festival is putting a big push on public attendance this year and is hoping to attract an audience of 10,000 in comparison to last year’s total of 4,000. But Hot Docs’ box office still only represents about 15% of the festival’s overall budget.

This year, Hot Docs has a budget of $460,000 cash and another $220,000 (goods and services), up from $375,000 last year, reflecting increased support from both public and private sponsors.

To help put Hot Docs on the map internationally, the festival has added a new curated program of international gala screenings and its own competition: the Critics Prize for best international film.

‘Our plan is to grow the international delegates by dramatically expanding the number of international feature docs that we’re screening,’ explains McDonald.

At the same time, Hot Docs is sticking close to its original mandate set out by the Canadian Independent Film Caucus in 1994 – to profile Canadian documentary filmmakers.

‘To best showcase the brightest and best in films and filmmakers, competition in the nominee program has been limited to Canadian entries only,’ says McDonald. A total of 56 new Canadian documentaries have been nominated from a total of 300 entries.

McDonald says this change in the competition has not discouraged participation and attendance from filmmakers and representatives from outside Canada, including broadcast executives.

International galas

Films featured in Hot Docs’ premiere international evening gala program include Andrzej Fidyk’s Battu’s Bioscope (Poland), Annie Goldson’s Punitive Damage (New Zealand), Robert Gibson’s Video Fool for Love (Australia), Thierry Michel’s Mobutu: Roi du Zaire (France/Belgium) and Mosco Boucault’s Un Crime a Abidjan and La Fusillade de Mole Street (France), and from the u.s., Ruth Leitman’s Alma and Jennifer Fox’s An American Love Story.

Alma is the story of a hard-drinking singer in the American south who is conflicted about whether she should take care of her wacky parents or abandon them. ‘There is a lot of humor and a lot of humanity,’ says Debbie Nightingale, Hot Docs’ festival director.

An American Love Story is a 10-hour film that documents the lives of an interracial couple and their two teenage daughters. The girls face conflicts in their lives: coming to their own identity as mulatto children. ‘It is a forerunner of the docusoap, we get totally engrossed in their lives,’ says Nightingale.

An American Love Story will be shown at two five-hour screenings May 8 and May 9 at the nfb’s John Spotton Cinema.

The festival boasts a new location at the Royal Theatre, with cafe screenings planned in Toronto’s Little Italy on College Street. Audiences will have a chance to meet and talk with filmmakers at small, intimate screenings for 50 to 100 people.

‘We’re taking the festival to the streets,’ says McDonald.

Industry conference

Among the panels at this year’s industry conference is ‘The Players,’ moderated by Pat Ferns, president and ceo of the Banff Television Festival. ‘We wanted to really show who’s got the dough,’ says Nightingale.

Formal presentations from commissioning editors and broadcast executives will offer guidelines as to what they’re looking for and what they’re paying. Among the panelists are Amy Briamonte of a&e and Jennifer Hyde of cnn, Andrew Solomon from France’s Docstar and Canal+, and Jacquie Lawrence from Channel 4 in the u.k.

‘If all the key documentary filmmakers and producers are here, it is a perfect place for the international community to come and meet the right people,’ says McDonald.

One of the highlights of the industry conference is a panel on the doc as soap opera, moderated by Cohen, a filmmaker, critic and consulting editor of Point of View magazine.

‘Docusoaps are going crazy in Europe and Canadians are just starting to get into them,’ says Nightingale.

One of the originators of the docusoap, Jeremy Mills (Airport, HMS Brilliant, Soho Stories), formerly of the bbc and now a producer with Lion Television in the u.k., will sit on the panel along with director/producer Jennifer Fox (An American Love Story, Beirut: The Last Home Movie, On the Ropes), Ludo Poppe from Belgium’s Kanakna Productions, and bbc director Chris Terril.

Other panels include ‘Forever Raising the Stakes,’ which will address ethical issues and questions vis-a-vis the boundaries between documentation and exploitation, and ‘Political Directness,’ dealing with the ways in which current affairs and news television are entering into the terrain traditionally covered by documentary filmmakers.

‘Short Shift’ will address the renewed interest in short documentaries; ‘Thinking Outside the Box’ will explore marketing issues; and ‘Dig the New Breed’ will focus on the demand for wildlife, science and nature films.

This year the Lifetime Achievement Award goes to u.s. filmmakers Albert and the late David Maysles, who are being recognized for their contribution to documentary cinema. Albert Maysles will be attending this year’s festival and will accept the award on behalf of his brother, David, who died in 1987. Three of their 21 films will be screened: Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens and Salesman.

This year’s country spotlight is France. Filmmakers Mosco Boucault (France) and Thierry Michel (France-Belgium) will be in attendance.