"This is a film every Canadian should see right now!" says Lynne Fernie, programmer of the Canadian Spectrum strand at Hot Docs 2006, referring to Samira Goetschel's first film, Our Own Private Bin Laden. But she is just as emphatic about the other 22 titles in the program, including 12 features, seven one-hours and three shorts.

After five months poring over 300 entries, Fernie feels entitled to praise her selections from B.C., Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, and to note the prevalence of films by directors based in Canada but whose stories unfold in foreign lands.

"[Canadians] want to understand the history and the context behind contemporary events. We all need less historical amnesia," she says.

Filmmaker Manfred Becker would agree. He says that he immigrated to Canada from Germany as a young man after frustrated attempts to get his father to speak in detail about his experience as a Nazi soldier in the Second World War, adding that he couldn't "live in a [post-war] graveyard." He wanted to be rid of the collective guilt and the shame of being associated with atrocities. He tried, until his son Jonas was called a Nazi in a Toronto schoolyard.

It bothered Becker more than his son, who'd developed a keen interest in military strategy. But when the innocent child remarked that, "With a little luck, Hitler could have won," Becker realized he and his son should talk to his father back in Germany. After History Television's VP of content Cindy Witten suggested he document the experience and Barna-Alper's Laszlo Barna came aboard as exec producer, Fatherland was born.

Part home movie, part therapy session, the film is, Becker says, about "what it means to be German in the latter part of the 20th century... It's about a guy who has to sort out his relationship with his son."

Becker wrote, directed, shot and produced the film. Presold to History, Fatherland 's other sales are in Barna-Alper's hands. In addition to its regular Hot Docs screenings, the film is also part of the festival's Docs in Schools program, launching this year. It's designed to give high school students in and around Toronto access to free documentary screenings from May 1-5, at the Bloor Cinema, Innis Town Hall and in participating schools.

The fallout from war and imperialism is also germane to Iranian-born Goetschel's one-hour Our Own Private Bin Laden. Fernie says the film "came out of nowhere" and had her "completely riveted."

Although Goetschel attended NYU film school, she had no interest in documentaries. But on Sept. 11, she gazed in horror as the World Trade Center buildings fell. She felt the collapse of the "safe place" she and her family had built in America - far from Iran, where her father had been murdered during the Islamic revolution. And she was frustrated the media would not adequately explain why Osama Bin Laden's men slammed those planes into the twin towers.

Her quest for answers led to the U.S.'s foreign policy during the Cold War and to many extraordinary interviews that tell a chilling tale about the roots of Islamic fundamentalism, and about today's international struggle to control resources and huge profits.