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.
Executive director Chris McDonald calls this year "something of a game-changer for Hot Docs," noting it features a third more films this year.
Hot Docs will screen more than 200 documentaries from 43 countries from April 28 to May 8 in Toronto.
"We are expanding the number of film presentations by one third, we are screening in new neighbourhoods across the city, and we will be providing more direct financial support to filmmakers," McDonald said Tuesday in a statement.
"The doc-making marketplace has changed dramatically, and so has our role within it. We are not just screening great work, we are helping to finance and distribute films in a meaningful way."
Official selections were drawn from 2,146 submissions.
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.
"Every year we start with the goal of showing everything documentary can do," says director of programming Sean Farnel.
"Yet, more so than ever, what documentary is doing is re-inventing itself, expanding our notions of its capacity to communicate contemporary stories and ideas. So let's call 2011 the year that docs broke wide open."
Canadian filmmaker Terence Macartney-Filgate will receive an outstanding achievement award for helping to refine the free-form, unscripted, observational approach of early NFB films.
Toronto's Alan Zweig, meanwhile, will be honoured with the Focus On retrospective, which showcases the work of a mid-career Canadian filmmaker.
- "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.
