Toronto Film Fest Lineup Announced

The Toronto International Film Festival celebrates its 25th birthday this year, and the list of party guests scheduled to attend is impressive.

Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Robert De Niro, Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, David Mamet, Robert Altman, Elizabeth Hurley, Gwyneth Paltrow, Minnie Driver, Daryl Hannah, Cuba Gooding Jr., Matthew Broderick, Alec Baldwin, Sarah Jessica Parker, Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe, William H. Macy, Farrah Fawcett, Dan Aykroyd, Laura Dern, Ellen Burstyn, Jeff Bridges, Richard Gere, Kenneth Branagh, Ben Kingsley, Helen Mirren, Ed Harris and many others will grace Toronto with their presence for the Sept. 7-16 event.

At a kickoff press conference Tuesday, the entire festival lineup was announced by director Piers Handling, including 329 films selected from 1,832 international submissions. Films from 56 countries will be shown; 253 are features and 76 are shorts.

The comedy "How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog," the directorial debut of Michael Kalesniko, was announced as the closing night film. Kenneth Branagh stars in the film as an L.A. playwright suffering from writer's block. His wife, played by Robin Wright Penn, is itching to start a family; his mother-in-law (Lynn Redgrave) has issues of her own; and the neighbor's dog just won't shut up. The film will have its world premiere at the festival.

Other gala films announced Tuesday:

• "The Dish," a world premiere directed by Australian Rob Sitch and starring Sam Neill and Patrick Warburton, is a humorous look at the role played by a small Australian town in the "man on the moon" mission in July 1969.
• "Sexy Beast," the world premiere of Jonathan Glazer's feature debut, starring Ray Winstone as an ex-con made good, and Ben Kingsley as the menacing villain determined to drag him back for one last spectacular job.
• "Pandemonium," directed by Julien Temple, stars John Hannah, Linus Roache, Samantha Morton and Emily Woof. It's the story of love and betrayal encircling the lives of poetic geniuses William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
• "The House Of Mirth," written and directed by Terence Davies, this North American premiere stars Gillian Anderson, Eric Stoltz, Dan Aykroyd and Laura Linney. Based on Edith Wharton's novel, "Mirth" follows a woman's struggle to maintain status in wealthy and savage New York society.

The special presentation lineup includes 22 films, with new directorial efforts from Joel Schumacher and Al Pacino. Schumacher's "Tigerland" focuses on a young recruit's experiences in the Vietnam War, and Pacino's "Chinese Coffee" portrays the relationship between a novelist (Pacino) and his mentor (Jerry Orbach).

Other features of this year's silver anniversary festival include a tribute to playwright Samuel Beckett through films of his plays, a Bloomberg-sponsored tribute to director Stephen Frears ("My Beautiful Laundrette," "Dangerous Liaisons"), and the integration of digital video in several film screenings.

Six features and nine shorts will be projected on digital video. Screenings at three theaters (Cumberland, Varsity, ROM) have been outfitted with HDDV (High-Definition Digital Video) projectors.

"As filmmakers like Mike Figgis, Wim Wenders and others move in this direction, it is important that the festival keep up technologically," Handling said Tuesday.

Previously announced films featured at the festival include "Beautiful," Sally Field's directorial debut starring Minnie Driver as an aspiring beauty queen, Cameron Crowe's new film "Almost Famous" with Oscar winners Frances McDormand and Anna Paquin, Christopher Guest's pet-show satire "Best In Show," Bruce Paltrow's karaoke film "Duets," starring his daughter Gwyneth, and Taiwan director Ang Lee's critically acclaimed film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

• For a complete list of festival films, click here.