The lineup for this year’s HotDocs was announced today. With a programme featuring 166 films, it’s an impressive array of the best documentaries currently on the festival circuit. Now in it’s 17th year, HotDocs is always wonderfully eclectic and this year is no exception. With films from 41 different countries there is a wonderful spread of style and subject matter and this is further represented in their Ripping Reality section. This Spotlight series is a brilliant retrospective of 10 groundbreaking documentaries from American Movie to Iraq in Fragments and Fog of War.

This year’s festival features pretty much every documentary I’ve been excited about this year, or missed elsewhere, and I can’t wait to check them out. I’m absolutely thrilled that Steven Soderbergh’s And Everything Is Going Fine is being shown and am really looking forward to seeing Candyman: The David Klein Story, Gasland, and The Canal Street Madam

Of those I’ve seen I can highly recommend 12th & Delaware (DocBlog review), Casino Jack and The United States of Money, Enemies of the People, My Perestroika, The Oath (Doc Blog review), Secrets of the Tribe (Doc Blog review) and D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hedegus’ incredible Kings of Pastry.

The festival opens with the Canadian Premiere of Thomas Balmés’ Babies and following that is the highly anticipated Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage

You can browse the full programme here