TORONTO - Morgan Spurlock's product placement doc, "POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold," is opening this year's Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

Spurlock, who earned an Oscar nomination for his 2004 fast-food expose "Super Size Me," says the 90-minute feature was financed entirely by product placement, marketing and advertising.

He leads a documentary slate featuring several high-profile titles, festival award-winners and star subjects.

They include films about late night talk show host Conan O'Brien, hip hop pioneers A Tribe Called Quest, Broadway legend Carol Channing, Cher offspring Chaz Bono, and "Sesame Street" star Elmo.

Sean Farnel, director of programming, says this year's fest "feels like a big international film festival."

"And it's not just the number of films, the number of screens or our capacity. It's also our ability to show everything that documentary is doing," Farnel said at a news conference held Tuesday morning at a downtown museum.

"The past decade has seen a renewal in the documentary form both as a vibrant storytelling form and also a force for social change. What we're seeing now is a form in the midst of reinventing itself of expanding its boundaries and emotions and expectations of it."

He noted that this year's offering includes scripted documentaries, animated non-fiction, 3D, re-enactment, and three-act dramas.

Executive director Chris McDonald called this year "something of a game-changer for Hot Docs," noting the fest features a third more screenings and about 15 per cent more films.

He also said the festival is intent on becoming a means to finance films as well as exhibit them.

Hot Docs already administers a $4-million fund for Canadian filmmakers that distributes about $700,000 a year. McDonald says the festival is poised to announce an international production fund that will help filmmakers in developing countries.

"The role of festivals is changing and we have to be more creative in the way that we support our talent because the appetite for great documentaries has continued to grow," McDonald said.

The Canadian Spectrum includes "Eco Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson," about the Greenpeace co-founder; "Grinders," about the world of professional poker; "The Guantanamo Trap," which follows four lives changed by the U.S. detention camp; and "Inside Lara Roxx," about a Montrealer who becomes the first female porn star to contract HIV on the job.

Toronto filmmaker Alan Zweig, who will be a jury member at this year's festival, said the homegrown offerings appeared to have more of an edge.

"The films this year seem unusually entertaining, which you don't always see at documentary film festivals," said Zweig, who will be honoured with the Focus On retrospective, which showcases the work of a mid-career Canadian filmmaker.

"Maybe I'm slagging previous years that I was in ... but I have found coming to this festival that the films that have the kind of theatrical nature, the ones that you would think of seeing in a theatre that are the sort of audience-pleasers often have been concentrated in the international films and that the Canadian films featured a slightly more social conscious thing. That was sort of our thing, maybe it's a Canadian tradition. None of my films had a social conscience of any kind and I got in but I always felt slightly alone kind of being the one kind of silly film in the midst of all these serious films."

Zweig's features include "Vinyl," about compulsive record collecting, and "I, Curmudgeon," which examined the risks of being a constant complainer.

Also being honoured this year is Canadian filmmaker Terence Macartney-Filgate, who will receive an outstanding achievement award for helping to refine the free-form, unscripted, observational approach of early NFB films.

Hot Docs will screen more than 200 documentaries from 43 countries from April 28 to May 8 in Toronto. Official selections were drawn from 2,146 submissions.

  • "The Hollywood Complex," about the spring migration of thousands of child actors who flock to Hollywood for TV's pilot season;
  • actor Michael Rapaport's directorial debut, "Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels Of A Tribe Called Quest," which charts the band's turbulent 20-year career;
  • "Becoming Chaz," which looks at Chaz (formerly Chastity) Bono's journey through gender reassignment;
  • "Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey" sneaking behind the scenes at "Sesame Street" to reveal the inspirational story of a shy puppeteer;
  • "The Bully Project," which spends a year on the front lines of the U.S. bullying epidemic;
  • "Carol Channing: Larger Than Life," a profile of the Broadway powerhouse;
  • the Sundance winner "How to Die in Oregon," which sees terminally ill patients seize control of their lives and deaths;
  • "You've Been Trumped," a David-meets-Goliath tale of Donald Trump versus "the bonniest village" in Scotland;
  • "After The Apocalypse," in which two mothers living near a nuclear testing site fight for the right to keep their unborn children;
  • and "Hot Coffee," an account of the infamous McDonald's scalding-coffee case.