TORONTO, Ontario (Reuters) - For 10 days in September, "Toronto the Good" becomes "Toronto the Chic" when those Hollywood celebrities and others light up the 26th International Film Festival, which is often used as a launching pad for Academy Award-winning films.
Organizers unveiled a dazzling list of films, actors and directors on Tuesday for the festival -- considered one of the world's most important, along with Cannes, Venice and Berlin. It also scuttles fears that this year's event, which runs September 6-15, would be a damp squib shunned by major stars.
Appearances by Rolling Stone-turned-film producer Mick Jagger, box office favorites such as Denzel Washington, Nicole Kidman and Uma Thurman, as well as legends such as director Bernardo Bertolucci and actor Anthony Hopkins, will likely assure a solid audience turnout.
But festival director Piers Handling insists most Toronto movie goers are more interested in the art than the celebrity factor.
"The festival's largely about showing films you don't have a chance to see elsewhere," Handling told a press conference. "A lot of savvy festival-goers will go see films from countries which they'll never get a chance to see again and for them, it's a different star system. It's more director-oriented."
A little smaller than last year's 25th anniversary festival, the 2001 event will showcase 326 films, including 175 making their global or North American premieres, from 56 countries stretching from Chile to Kazakhstan.
About 60 percent of the films are non-English and the tone is decidedly darker than the previous year with many films dealing with the Second World War, grief and family dysfunction.
"There's a certain nostalgia in the work this year, a lot of filmmakers, the baby boom generation in particular, who are looking backward in time," Handling said. "A lot of films dealt with angry young people who were often in dysfunctional families and had derelict parents."
The disenchanted youth theme was apparent in not only American films but Asian and European ones, Handling said.
The film festival will be launched by Bruce Sweeney's "Last Wedding" and will be closed by Australian director Ray Lawrence's psychological thriller, "Lantana," starring Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush and Barbara Hershey.
Other films making their world premiere include "Last Orders" with Michael Caine, "Novocaine," starring Steve Martin and Helena Bonham-Carter and Scott Hicks' "Hearts in Atlantis," with Anthony Hopkins.
North American debuts include David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive," David Mamet's "Heist," starring Danny De Vito and Gene Hackman, "From Hell," with Johnny Depp, and "Training Day," starring Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke.
The spotlight will fall on Scandinavian cinema this year with 15 films by Nordic filmmakers on display in a program entitled "Nordic Visions: Recent Films from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden."
