OTTAWA (AFP) — Actors Ben Kingsley, George Clooney, Peter O'Toole, directors Ethan and Joel Coen, and more star power than ever will be on hand for the upcoming 33rd Toronto International Film Festival, organizers announced Tuesday.
The festival, which runs from September 4-13, will showcase 249 feature films and 63 shorts from 64 countries this year, including 116 world premieres.
It opens with a gala presentation of Canadian filmmaker Paul Gross's World War I epic "Passchendaele," based on his own grandfather's experiences in this major battle of 1917.
Also hotly anticipated are the Coen brothers' latest dark film "Burn After Reading," starring Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Clooney; Gavin O'Connor's police drama "Pride and Glory" with Edward Norton, Colin Farrell and Jon Voight.
Another standout is Rod Lurie's "Nothing but the Truth," which casts Kate Beckinsale as a Washington reporter jailed for refusing to reveal her CIA source for an explosive news story about a government scandal. It also stars Matt Dillon, Alan Alda and David Schwimmer.
France produced or co-produced a whopping 49 films to be shown at the festival this year, led by Jean-Francois Richet's thriller "Public Enemy Number One."
The film casts Vincent Cassel as Mesrine, the legendary French gangster of the 1960s and 1970s infamous for his sadism, bravado and daring prison escapes.
Briton Danny Boyle ("Trainspotting") is back with his comedy "Slumdog Millionaire" about a kid who wants to be a contestant on a Hindi version of the hit US television game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire."
And 12 international filmmakers, including Scarlett Johansson and Nathalie Portman, are to showcase a litany of short films describing love in the Big Apple in "New York, I Love You," featuring performances from Orlando Bloom, Christina Ricci, Hayden Christensen, Andy Garcia, Ethan Hawke, Kevin Bacon, and James Caan.
The Toronto International Film Festival is the biggest in North America, having become a key event for Oscar-conscious studios and distributors and is attended by a sizable contingent of North American media.
Some 500 movie-stars are expected this year to help promote the fare.
Unlike Cannes and Berlin film festivals, Toronto does not award jury prizes.
But moviegoers who bought more than 300,000 tickets for the event in 2007 awarded an audience prize for best motion picture to Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg for his violent thriller "Eastern Promises," about the Russian mafia in London.
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