Four Canadian documentaries will feature among the 25 projects to be pitched during the Hot Docs Forum at the upcoming Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

Producer Jamie Kastner will pitch his latest, Inside Joke: How Humour Invented the Jews, from Kastner’s Cave 7 Productions and Germany-based Ventana Film-Und Fernsehproduktionsgesellschaft MBH.

And the TIFF Pitch This! winner Leone Stars, from Toronto-based indie producer Mattru Media and co-directed by Allan Tong and Ngardy Conteh, will also pitch Canadian and international broadcast players during the annual Hot Docs Forum.

Also putting its best foot forward is the team behind The Pleasures of the Scents, from Montreal-based Lowik Media, and Shadow Girl, from Toronto-based Storyline Entertainment Inc. and Chile’s Maremoto Productions.

The Hot Docs Forum will also feature projects from the U.S., France, Israel, Armenia, Sweden, Denmark and the U.K.

The Hot Docs Forum pitching event, which will take place May 2 and 3, allows filmmakers to present their projects to a roundtable of international commissioning editors, producers, distributors, sales agents, funders and other buyers.

Hot Docs and the Blue Ice Group also announced Tuesday that $115,000 will be invested in six African documentary projects as part of the first round of the Hot Docs-Blue Ice Group Documentary Fund.

The grant recipients were selected from 140 submissions and will attend the Hot Docs 2012 fest and participate in both the filmmakers’ lab on April 28 and 29, and in International Co-Production Day on April 30.