Hot Docs Awards Pitch Prize to White Pine Pictures

TORONTO: The inaugural Canwest-Hot Docs Pitch Prize was handed out at the Toronto Documentary Forum (TDF), with the C$40,000 going to Toronto’s White Pine Pictures for The Team.

Pitched as a feature-length, vérité-style documentary, The Team takes place in Kenya in the wake of the country’s 2007 election violence. It follows as Kenyans scramble to produce a dramatic TV soap opera series about a fictional soccer team, hoping taboo story lines can bridge deep ethnic divisions as their country teeters on the brink. The award funds will be used for the film’s production.

Also at the TDF, TDF Observers—made up of producers, distributors and other industry professionals—decided to establish the first-ever TDF Observer Award. The effort pulled in some $900 plus an additional $500 donated by Montreal’s EyeSteelFilm. The award was presented to the U.K.’s Met Film Productions for Town of Runners, a film that will follow young athletes from the rural Ethiopian town of Bekoji as they move from school track to national competition and from childhood to adulthood. The project was pitched by producer Al Morrow and director/writer Jerry Rothwell. They announced that the funds will be used to purchase a motorcycle for one the subjects in the film, a track coach, to assist in his training of marathon runners.