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This year's lineup of documentaries at the Toronto International Film Festival proves the humble doc is steadily gaining steam and mass appeal, featuring the directorial clout of Scott Hicks (Shine) and Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland), as well as the talent of Michael Douglas, Joan Allen and Don Cheadle.

Yesterday, TIFF announced 20 non-fiction titles in its Real to Reel program, including Oscar-nominated Hicks's documentary Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts, in which Allen and other musical luminaries interact with the famed New York composer.

Ted Braun's Darfur Now, features Cheadle and five other diverse individuals trying to wake up the world to the atrocities of the genocide in western Sudan.

Liev Schreiber appears in Nina Davenport's Operation Filmmaker, a recounting of what happens when the actor invites a young Iraqi student – bereft after the bombing of his film school – on to the set of the feature film Everything Is Illuminated.

Veteran actors Donald Sutherland, Douglas, Liam Neeson and Allen appear in Peter Askin's Trumbo, the portrait of the screenwriter who fought back after being blacklisted by the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee.

Glasgow-based Macdonald (whose Last King of Scotland won an Oscar for leading man, Forest Whitaker) comes to Real to Reel with My Enemy's Enemy, about the postwar activities of the notorious Gestapo commander Klaus Barbie, better known as the “Butcher of Lyon.” Acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog returns to TIFF this year with Encounters at the End of the World, about his first trip to Antarctica. It is Herzog's first documentary since the acclaimed Grizzly Man.

Thom Powers, TIFF's international documentary programmer, said yesterday that many emerging and veteran filmmakers are turning to the genre because it's “liberating.”

“Hicks told me it was an exhilarating experience for him to grab hold of the camera, be hands-on, and not to have to deal with the trucks, the trailers and unions,” said Powers. The director, nominated for seven Oscars for Shine, recently completed the big-budget romantic comedy No Reservations, with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart.

New filmmaker (and former talk-show host) Phil Donahue has teamed up with veteran documentary maker Ellen Spiro to present Body of War, the story of Tomas Young, a 25-year-old veteran who returned home paralyzed from the chest down to emerge as a strident voice against the war.

Parvez Sharma's A Jihad for Love, examines the intersection of Islam and homosexuality, from the point of view of an Indian Muslim, not an outsider looking in.

Fascinating portraitures include Doug Pray's Surfwise (a character study of legendary surfer Dr. Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, his wife and nine kids); Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O'Connor's Obscene (about New York publisher Barney Rossett who fought for forbidden literature such as Lady Chatterley's Lover); and veteran director Barbet Schroeder's Terror's Advocate (the life of criminal lawyer Jacques Vergès, whose clients included Klaus Barbie, Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.

TIFF also added eight new titles to its provocative Vanguard program, including Paranoid Park by Gus Van Sant, and Deficit, a directorial debut for actor Gael Garcia Bernal.