In Symfony, Zend and other frameworks you can rend a controller inside a view like this:

{{ render(controller('AcmeArticleBundle:Article:recentArticles', { 'max': 3 })) }}

 Creating and Using templates documentation here.

Just because there is a possibility to render(ControllerMethod,{ params}) in a template doesn’t mean you have to use it.

Doing so leads almost always to a shitty architecture, the turning point where projects start to be hard to debug, since you are mixing a VIEW (Presentation layer) with a CONTROLLER, that in turn renders another VIEW. You get the point.

What happens afterwars is a little bit counter-productive when debugging:
An error in the ControllerMethod is rendered as a template View error.   Not so nice isn’t it ?

Controller methods should Return a View that has all the required parameters to render the View. But if inside that View, you are going around the loop, rendering another Controller that in turn has another View, can be the start of a infinite loop that swallows the universe and you should get a warning red light in your Frontal Lobe. Overcomplicating things with quick and dirty solutions is the wrong way in Software architecture and the responsible of a big amount of relationship problems.

I vouch for strong architecture in software projects

This cheap solutions, like using this render commodities, lead to the start of the bad. And I suggest to avoid it as much as you can unless there is no other possible way.  And certainly there is!

That is the reason to use MVC. To separate Code from Presentation layer, start mixing both, and your architecture will leak.