Anthony Kaufman writes for The Wall Street Journal and Variety among other publications; and blogs at Indiewire. Here are his TIFF doc picks:

1. Chris Smith makes great, underappreciated movies (from his 1996 debut American Job to his more recent The Pool), so I have little doubt that  his latest Collapse will be a superbly crafted portrait. And personally prone to enjoy stories of apocalypse, I'm particularly biased towards this latest  subject.

2. When fiction filmmakers try out nonfiction, the results don't always hold  up, but Iceland director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson's latest project The Sunshine Boy (pictured) seems like it has a delicacy and simplicity that might be well  suited to the filmmaker, and humanist, compelling subject matter--the quest to understand autism--that would be hard to muck up.

3. What's currently happening in both China and contemporary Chinese documentary film is often fascinating to behold - see recent Toronto standout  Still Life. That makes me curious about Guo Xiaolu's Once Upon a Time  Proletarian: 12 Tales of a Country. Descriptives such as "dark, poetic, existentialist" usually catch my eye. Plus, the filmmaker--whom I never  heard of until now--was just awarded a Golden Leopard at Locarno, so Toronto  would be a good place to catch up on a new world talent.