Karina Rotenstein is the Programming Manager at Hot Docs, and Manager of the Canwest-Hot Docs Documentary Funds. Here's her response to our call for TIFF doc picks:

Let's face it, 2009 is proving to be incredibly robust year in documentary! And so it's that time of the year where I get to cleanse my programming palette, put on my flats and spend 10 days running between theatres hoping to catch all the docs I can. Here are just a few to which I look forward:

Erik Gandini's VIDEOCRACY (pictured) is a must-see and talk about timing! Both Gandini's previous films SURPLUS and G.I.T.M.O., were incredibly insightful, thorough, provocative and ahead of their time. I'm a fan, and his work is delightfully subversive. So I can't wait to see his approach to Berlusconi's media empire...

From Mexico there's PRESUMED GUILTY by Roberto Hernandez and Geoffrey Smith. I'm very fascinated in judicial systems, incarceration and civil liberties...and especially when they are horrifically compromised (which is always). Hernandez, a defense lawyer, with Smith, whose film THE ENGLISH SURGEON won Hot Docs in 2008...oh yes, I am there!

To balance out the hard-themed docs, THE TOPP TWINS by Leanne Pooley is definitely on the list. Camp meets heart (and talent!), I think these two lesbian country-western singers from New Zealand will rock Toronto.

I love docs that leave me visually awestruck. L'Enfer de Henri-Georges Clouzot by Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea, and the haunting Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands by Peter Mettler should do the trick.

Given the current (dismal) climate of government funding in film productions, especially in documentary, and the loss of CBC's The Lens, I urge all fellow doc lovers (industry and public), to support all the wonderful Canadian docs in this years' programme and beyond!