Cold water is the hot topic at this year’s Hot Docs, which will include five titles about H2O, including the world premiere of Kevin McMahon’s Waterlife, the Canadian director’s look at the Great Lakes, set to the tunes of The Tragically Hip and narrated by lead singer Gordon Downie.

The picture comes almost 20 years after McMahon’s like-minded The Falls.

‘There wasn’t an interest in water again until the environmental issues became hot again,’ says McMahon.

‘And water is the most beautiful thing in the world to film,’ he enthuses, noting that Waterlife is ‘gorgeous’ to look at and much more accessible than his 1991 film. Waterlife, which is distributed by Mongrel Media, garnered a special presentation at the fest, as did The Cove, a gripping call to end Japan’s dolphin slaughter.

Water is also the subject of H2Oil, about the environmental impact of Alberta’s tar sands; End of the Line, which delivers disturbing news for seafood lovers; and Black Wave, about the Exxon Valdez oil spill 20 years later.

‘You don’t need to watch 2,000 documentaries to know these are wild times,’ said Hot Docs director of programming Sean Farnel when he unveiled this year’s lineup of 171 films at a recent press gathering in Toronto. The docs are ‘about bringing some order to the chaos,’ he said, paraphrasing a quote from George Orwell that they are about ‘strange and valuable things we may not have learned in any other way.’

A total of 38 Canadian docs, including 23 features, will unspool at the fest, selected from a record 400 or so entries.

Hot Docs will host the world premiere of Larry Weinstein’s Inside Hana’s Suitcase, the story behind a young girl’s name scrawled on a suitcase from Auschwitz; and the North American premiere of John Greyson’s Fig Trees, an ‘outraged tribute’ to the activist/heroes of the HIV/AIDS movement.

Other special presentations include Tyson, a sympathetic portrait of the notorious boxer; Kirby Dick’s Outrage, a searing indictment of closeted American politicians who campaign against the gay community; and Mercedes Stalenhoef’s Carmen Meets Borat, a dark comedy about the Romanian villagers who were stunned to learn of their misrepresentation as Kazakhstani idiots in the Borat film.

Jennifer Baichwal’s (Manufactured Landscapes) meditation on being struck by lightning, Act of God, is the fest opener.

In the competitive Canadian Spectrum program, 10 features will premiere, including Barry Greenwald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s The Experimental Eskimos, produced by Peter Raymont; and Albert Nerenberg’s Laughology, an epic quest to discover laughter’s source and meaning.

Special programs this year include a seven-film spotlight on South Korea and Let’s Make Money, a look at need and greed.

International fare includes Mads Brügger’s The Red Chapel, about the exploits of a Danish journalist and two comedians in North Korea; and Eric Daniel Metzgar’s Reporter, which follows Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as he reports on the humanitarian crises in the Congo.

Hot Docs runs from April 30 to May 10 in Toronto.