My Life As a Terrorist: The Story of Hans-Joachim Klein (left) will have its North American premiere at TIFF this year. In 1975, Klein joined the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal in a kidnapping of OPEC officials in Vienna. Klein came to regret his involvement, went into hiding for two decades and was eventually arrested. After getting out of prison, he told his life story to Dutch filmmaker Alexander Oey for this remarkable documentary.

The film was brought to my attention by its sales agent Jan Rofekamp of Films Transit. Here Jan recounts one of his previous TIFF success stories...

JAN ROFEKAMP:
I have been in documentary sales since the early Eighties and even though throughout those years we have seen occasional theatrical interest for our docs, as we all know, this theatrical interest has significantly increased today and seems to be here to stay. Theatrical is no longer a pipe dream, although the number of filmmakers that want this for their films largely outnumbers the opportunities. Documentaries have always had a place at TIFF, but since the upsurge in popularity of the genre, TIFF has become for us one of our major launch-pads for feature docs.

Let me tell you about a magical moment at the point of this significant change. When The Corporation premiered in Toronto in 2003, we had decided with the filmmakers to have a go at theatrical and present a feature version in world premiere (instead of the 3 x 57' version) and we decided to do an invitation-only sneak preview in a small cinema in the Varsity a day before the official world premiere.

When I walked in a few minutes before the screening, I held my breath and.....THEY WERE ALL THERE! Every single US distributor and a superb selection of the foreigners were filling the room. I should have had a camera with me to take a picture. Everybody was there...for a doc. I felt this as a magical moment, after all these years of struggle. It would have been unthinkable a year earlier. As we all know The Corporation took off at that moment to a world wide career that is still in full swing.