With the growing success of documentaries in the theatrical marketplace, studios are now scouting film festivals for potential breakouts. The 29th Toronto International Film Festival yesterday made the first announcement of this year's nonfiction film selection. Among the 24 titles to unspool at the festival, which runs September 9-18, are 11 world premieres and six North American premieres, including:

Ken Burns's Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, about the first black man to win the heavyweight boxing title;

George Butler's highly anticipated film on John Kerry, Going Upriver -- The Long War of John Kerry;

Peter Raymont's Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire, about the U.N. commander's return to Rwanda a decade after the genocide;

Susan Kaplan's Three of Hearts, about a "trinogomous" 13-year relationship between two men and one woman;

Thomas Riedelsheimer's Touch the Sound, about a deaf percussionist who "hears" sound through his entire body;

Bruce Weber's A Letter to True, a poetic reflection on war and peace;

James D. Stern and adam Del Deo's The Year of Yao, about Chinese baskeball star Yao Ming's first year in the NBA;

Michael Epstein's Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate, about United Artists's disatrous release of Michael Cimino's 1980 film starring Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Isabelle Huppert, Joseph Cotten and Jeff Bridges;

Jacques Richard's biopic about the founder of the French Cinematheque, Le Fantome d'Henri Langlois;

Gunner Palace, by Michael Tucker and Petra Eperlein's, two jounalists embedded with troops in Iraq who report the news unreported by American television;

Peter Lynch's Whale of a Tale, about the discovery of a whalebone during the excavation of a new Toronto subway line;

Hubert Sauper's Darwin's Nightmare, which examines the economic disparity of Africa's Great Lakes region;

Don Boyd chronicles a gay marriage in Andrew and Jeremy Get Married;

Raymond Depardon's 10e Chambre, Instants D'Audiences is an unprecented look at the French judicial system;

Clara Law's Letters to Ali chronicles an Australian couple's attempts to adopt an Afghan boy detained in a refugee camp;

Elida Schogt's Zero:The Inside Story details one woman's journey to India in search of the origin of the number zero;

Velcrow Ripper's Scaredsacred takes the audience on a tour of the earth's "Ground Zeroes" in search of survivors who overcome adversity;

John Appel's The Last Victory portrays the citizens of Civetta as they prepare for the last race of Siena's famous Palio racehorse;

Margaret Brown's Be Here to Love Me, about the musician Townes Van Zandt;

Russian director Georgy Paradjanov's I Died in Childhood profiles his uncle, revered Russian filmmaker Sergei Paradjanov;

Amanda Micheli's Double Dare is an action-packed documentary about two Hollywood stunt women;

and Caroline Martel's Le Fantome de l'Operatrice is a montage film crafted from telephone company movies that were produced in North America between 1910 and 1989.

Previously announced documentary selections include Patricio Guzman's Salvador Allende and Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation.

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 7/28/2004 10:04:00 AM

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