A Kingston, Ont., group performs music from The Year of the Flood during Margaret Atwood's unusual book tour. (Sphinx Productions)

In the Wake of the Flood, Toronto filmmaker Ron Mann's documentary about Margaret Atwood's unusual book tour for her novel The Year of the Flood, will open this year's Planet in Focus film festival in Toronto.

The festival also plans to honour Atwood and fellow novelist and partner Graeme Gibson with the Canadian Eco Hero Award given annually for outstanding contribution to environmental awareness.

Atwood's The Year of the Flood is set in a dystopian future and centres on a small group of spiritual ecologists called God's Gardeners who survive a worldwide pandemic.

Atwood's 2009 tour in support of the book was a departure from the usual round of readings given in big lecture halls.

Instead the Booker Prize-winning novelist travelled by train and other ecologically friendly means and enlisted local volunteers from conservation groups to re-enact scenes from the book.

"I did it [the tour] as a fundraiser and awareness raiser for conservation groups, primarily green groups and that's the aspect that Ron is covering in the documentary, how we did that," Atwood told CBC News in an interview July 23.

Mann, director of Comic Book Confidential and Go Further, chronicled her journey from Edinburgh to London to New York and across Canada.

Ron Mann, left, and Margaret Atwood in the studio working on In the Wake of the Flood. (Sphinx Productions)

Each stop featured a theatrical presentation in which choirs sang songs from the book — using a hymn book from the fictional God's Gardeners — and played key scenes.

"People got thoroughly into it. Some of them were extraordinary performances," Atwood said, describing participants who created music for the hymns and wove hats and made sandals of found materials as God's Gardeners might have done.

Atwood said she hoped to shake the human race into an awareness of the fragility of the natural world with her novel and its unusual promotional tour.

Opening night for Mann's In the Wake of the Flood is Oct. 13 at the Bell Lightbox, new home of the Toronto International Film Festival Group. The film has its world premiere later this month in Australia.

The Toronto screening will be accompanied by a performance by Echo, a Toronto-based women's choir that will perform passages from the novel set to music.

The Planet in Focus film and video festival annually champions a slate of environmental films. This year's festival is scheduled for Oct. 13-17 in Toronto.