By John Corrado

Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Brühl in The Fifth Estate, opening TIFF on September 5th

So it begins.  The first batch of over 70 Galas and Special Presentations that will be screening during the 38th Toronto International Film Festival were announced this morning, and the festival will open on September 5th with the world premiere of Bill Condon’s WikiLeaks drama The Fifth Estate.  The festival will close with Daniel Schecter’s Life of Crime, which will screen on September 14th.  More films will be announced over the coming weeks.

Among the hotly anticipated films that will be premiering as Gala Presentations include the ensemble dramedy August: Osage County, the Sundance hit Kill Your Darlings, the promising biopic Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and Ron Howard’s hotly anticipated Rush.  Among the equally impressive line up of Special Presentations are Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, Palme d’Or Winner Blue is the Warmest Color, John Carney’s Can a Song Save Your Life?, Atom Egoyan’s Devil’s Knot, the Matthew McConaughey AIDS drama Dallas Buyers Club and Asghar Farhadi’s The Past.  Canadian director Paul Haggis is also back at the festival with Third Person, his latest drama of interlocking stories.

Some of my other most anticipated films include Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut Don Jon, Denis Villeneuve’s kidnapping thriller Prisoners and Alfonso Cauron’s science fiction epic Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.  Jason Reitman’s Labor Day will also be premiering, and if the deeply moving novel by Joyce Maynard is any indication, then the drama starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin could end up being a breakout hit at the festival.  I’ve also been hearing strong buzz about the small drama Philomena, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan.  The double bill of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: His and Hers will also be premiering, a lengthy two part film starring Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy.

There were several films that were missing from the announcement, including the Coen Brothers much anticipated Inside Llewyn Davis which got rave reviews out of Cannes, and Scott Cooper’s promising sophomore feature Out of the Furnace.  But this excellent line up suggests that the festival is already off to a great start, and there is a lot to look forward to coming up in September.  Now comes the hard pard of sorting through which films I will actually have time to see during those eleven days, but watch for lots of coverage throughout the festival.  You can browse through all of the films right here.