Growing audiences for documentaries noted as Hot Docs film fest begins

Facing a growing public appetite for documentaries as well as an influx of filmmakers eager to explore the genre, organizers of the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival are raising the curtain Thursday on another strong lineup in Toronto.

For this year's edition, North America's largest festival dedicated to the documentary genre will screen 171 films from 39 countries before an estimated audience of about 100,000 people gathered in Toronto.

"For the past five years, it's been this real boom for feature-length documentaries. We've seen our audiences here at Hot Docs double," programming director Sean Farnel told CBC News.

His team received a record number of submissions to consider for this year's lineup and has spent the last few weeks puzzling over how to schedule more than 300 screenings of the chosen films over the festival's 11 days.

The festival's growth in recent years can be attributed to a variety of factors, says executive director Chris McDonald.

"[Audiences are] looking for alternate voices," he said. "And as technology changed, it became a lot easier anda lot cheaper for people to make films and tell stories in documentary format. A lot of things happened at the same time that allowed this genre to really explode."

Reflecting the upsurge in documentary filmmaking, Hot Docs is offering a vast range of movies tackling a mix of subjects, from delving into ecological concerns, to telling biographical tales, to examining hot-button topics like faith, sexuality and intolerance.

This year's special programs include tributes to filmmakers Ron Mann and Alanis Obomsawin, and to the National Film Board (celebrating its 70th anniversary this weekend), a spotlight on docs from South Korea and a series called Let's Make Money, assembling films about finance, the corporate world and the pursuit of wealth.

The 16th annual Hot Docs film festival officially opens Thursday evening with a screening of Jennifer Baichwal's film Act of God.

The festival runs April 30 to May 10.