This year's edition of North America's largest documentary film festival, the Canadian International Documentary Festival (May 1-7), marks the launch of a documentary financing market, the Toronto Documentary Forum.

The two-day event, modelled on the successful Forum for International Co-Financing of Documentaries in Amsterdam, will see 36 production teams pitching their projects to commissioning editors and other documentary financiers. Potential funding sources attending the pitching sessions including representatives of US channels and networks such as A&E, HBO and PBS; an array of European broadcasters such the BBC and Germany's ARD; and Australia's ABC and SBS networks.

The festival - dubbed Hot Docs - will present more than 80 documentaries from Canada and around the world, including a retrospective of Australia non-fiction programming. The event, held in Toronto, opens with the Canadian premiere of Oscar-winning German filmmaker Pepe Danquart's Home Game (Heimspiel).