The Toronto International Film Festival kicks off Thursday, with Hollywood stars Russell Crowe, Sydney Sweeney and Daniel Craig bringing hotly anticipated world premieres to the 50th edition of North America's biggest movie event.
Though lacking the historic glamour of Cannes or Venice, TIFF dwarfs rival festivals for sheer scale and is a key launchpad for Oscars campaigns, luring A-listers, critics and giant public audiences for 11 days of red-carpet galas.
On this anniversary year, Matthew McConaughey, Paul Mescal, Angelina Jolie and Anya Taylor-Joy will all hit the screenings and soirees in Canada, while French directors Romain Gavras, Claire Denis and Arnaud Desplechin bring an added European flair.
Among the world premieres, Crowe gives what organizers describe as a nuanced and eerily charismatic performance as Nazi Hermann Goering on trial in historical drama "Nuremberg," opposite fellow Oscar-winner Rami Malek.
"The unexpected part of this performance is you don't expect to be disarmed by this person, who you know has done horrible things," said TIFF director of programming Robyn Citizen. "And then, through the course of the movie, you are."
Sweeney aims to pivot from her recent jeans ad controversy to Academy Award contender with "Christy," a gritty, raw biopic of U.S. female boxing pioneer Christy Martin.
"I think this is the role that's going to make people take notice again of the actor that she is," predicted Citizen.
In another harrowing true-life tale, McConaughey rescues schoolchildren from California wildfires in the emotionally searing action-thriller "The Lost Bus."
With an estimated 400,000 annual attendees, the "audience-first" Toronto festival traditionally showcases splashy crowd-pleasers alongside awards fare.
This year marks the return for a third time at TIFF of Netflix's popular "Knives Out" whodunit franchise, with former 007 actor Craig back investigating the latest murder in "Wake Up Dead Man."
Josh Brolin plays an unnerving demagogue with a cult following in a film that "tackles current issues in a fun, locked-room, classical-plot way," says Citizen.
Several French auteurs are set to attend this year's fest.
Matt Dillon appears in Denis' drama "The Fence," about a mysterious death on an African construction site, while Desplechin launches love story "Two Pianos" starring Charlotte Rampling.
Alice Winocour pairs with Jolie for Paris fashion drama "Couture."
Gavras's celebrity climate-change satire "Sacrifice" stars Taylor-Joy and Chris Evans as an eco-terrorist and a waning movie star, respectively.
Elsewhere, the festival's comedy selections contain some of its starriest names.
Keanu Reeves plays an incompetent angel in Aziz Ansari's body-swapping farce "Good Fortune," while Channing Tatum portrays a real-life fugitive who lives clandestinely inside a Toys R Us store in "Roofman."
Brendan Fraser plays a lonely actor available for hire at funerals and weddings in Tokyo-set "Rental Family."
Toronto follows hot on the heels of the small but influential U.S.-based Telluride festival, and as usual invites a selection of movies from that intimate event to make a bigger, second splash in the Canadian metropolis.
Among them, Mescal plays a young William Shakespeare in literary adaptation "Hamnet" from Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao - though the focus is squarely on the Bard's long-suffering wife Agnes, played by a "transcendent" Jessie Buckley, says Citizen.
And fresh from Venice, Guillermo del Toro brings his reimagining of "Frankenstein" to Toronto.
"Brat" singer-songwriter Charli xcx has two new films - Gavras's "Sacrifice" and Polish arthouse drama "Erupcja."
And Baz Luhrmann will premiere "EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert," featuring long-lost footage of The King that the director unearthed while making his 2022 biopic "Elvis."
TIFF runs from Thursday through to Sept. 14.
