This year, we’ve got an impressive presence at the 2009 Hot Docs documentary film festival in Toronto, one of the largest doc festivals in the world which takes place April 30 to May 10.

We have eight films being presented this year, including:

• Invisible City, about two boys from inner-city Regent Park crossing into adulthood.
• Love at the Twilight Motel, a glimpse of life inside a pay-by-the-hour motel.
• The Real Place, an animated short created to honour Alberta playwright John Murrell on his lifetime achievement award from the Governor General of Canada.
• Waterlife, a doc that follows the epic cascade of the Great Lakes from Lake Superior to the Atlantic Ocean, telling the story of the last huge supply of fresh water on Earth.
• Fierce Light, a film that captures the exciting movement of spiritual activism that is exploding around the planet, and the powerful personalities who are igniting it.
• Paris 1919, an inside look at the Paris Peace Conference that followed World War I.
• Roadsworth: Crossing the Line, about a Montreal stencil artist’s clandestine campaign to make his mark on the city streets, define himself as an artist and address questions about art and freedom of expression.
• Professor Norman Cornett: “Since when do we divorce the right answer from an honest answer?” in which Alanis Obomsawin reflects upon how we educate our youth in a tribute to this exceptional professor.

Check out our Hot Docs playlist.

Also, this year Alanis Obomsawin is the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award Retrospective. To mark this occasion, we’ve created our very own playlist to honour her. The playlist is accompanied by an interview with Ms. Obomsawin and features her own commentaries on six of her films.

Watch the Alanis Obomsawin Retrospective playlist.

Finally, the NFB itself will be honoured this year, with the Hot Docs Spotlight on the NFB at 70.  This program will include a retrospective of some of the finest films we’ve produced over the past seven decades.

Watch our special Hot Docs Spotlight on the NFB at 70 playlist.