With feature documentaries demonstrating impressive box office in recent years, distributors have become increasingly careful – and clever – when releasing non-fiction fare.

This year’s sixth annual Toronto Documentary Forum will provide more opportunities for filmmakers seeking funding and will give broadcasters a stronger voice at the proceedings. The new initiatives come after event director Michaelle McLean did an evaluation of TDF’s first five years.

Stress, high drama and white-knuckled adrenaline characterize the annual 2880 Film Blitz, the third edition of which takes place in Montreal May 27-29. Over the course of one weekend, independent film crews will put themselves through sleepless misery as they compete for prizes in the indie film contest.

Exhibitors and distributors have their own problems, not the least of which are piracy, competing home technologies and – in this country at least – the reported impending sell-off of a certain 84-location theater chain.

Lions Gate and its newly spun-off distribution partner Maple Pictures make their screening debut at this year’s ShowCan with the ensemble piece Crash – directed by Paul Haggis (Due South) and starring Sandra Bullock and Matt Damon, among others – on April 30.

A sad reality of English-Canadian cinema has been that most domestic productions, vying against Hollywood fare, end up getting play on only one or two screens in the major markets. The smaller markets, meanwhile, traditionally would never get a chance to see these films theatrically, and as for foreign distribution, forget it.

As Hollywood gets ready to unleash its spring and summer superheroes on suspecting moviegoers, Quebec distributors are likewise readying their slates of potentially lucrative domestic films. This summer’s offerings are marked by literary adaptations and the return of proven production teams.

Ottawa has rethought and, again, tabled its thoughts on the Lincoln Report – laying out a rough plan for the future of Canada’s broadcasting policy that calls for industry-wide improvements to local and regional programming, a steady share of CTF funds for CBC, and a freeze on current foreign ownership restrictions – but which sidesteps calls for a redo of the 1999 Television Policy and for more stable CBC funding.

The Canadian Television Fund has revamped eligibility rules for documentaries by loosening some Cancon restrictions and redefining what constitutes long-form doc programming, in a move greeted with tempered enthusiasm by the doc community.

Weeks after causing a world-scale headache for networks on both sides of the Atlantic, it remains unclear who leaked the first episode of the new Doctor Who series to the Internet – except that it was someone in Canada. Someone who is now unemployed.

Ottawa: Following weeks of presentations here, the Heritage standing committee is now assessing many hours’ worth of advice – some ‘same old same old,’ some hits of fresh-faced optimism – about Canada’s feature film policy.

Montreal: TVA and Television Quatre Saisons are once again boycotting the Gemeaux Awards, echoing a controversy that threatened the Quebec French-language TV awards in 2002.