Toronto festival offers premieres, politics, stars

TORONTO, Sep 6 (Reuters) This year's Toronto International Film Festival will offer more star wattage and world premieres than almost any in its 30-year history, as well as the potential for a goodly amount of controversy.

Several films at the ten-day festival, which starts on Thursday, will examine the state of President George W Bush's America. Already the festival has had to issue a statement defending its decision to screen the contentious ''Death of a President'', a mock documentary that depicts the fictional assassination of Bush.

But at this point controversy still plays second fiddle to the buzz of anticipation surrounding the appearances of Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Penelope Cruz, Russell Crowe and other stars, as well as the 352 films from 61 countries that will be shown.

The Toronto festival has been growing steadily in profile -- this is its 31st edition -- and now has a reputation as a launch pad for Oscar hopefuls, a sentiment not lost on the actors and directors who will be promoting films, and the distributors who will be bidding to buy them.

''We are a festival of discovery,'' festival co-director Noah Cowan told Reuters.

''For some of these movies that have stars but no distributor...

they can come here, get a distributor, and really make a difference in worldwide box office.'' Already several entrants are being touted as possible award contenders, such as ''All the King's Men'', starring Penn in a remake of the movie classic about the rise and fall of a political demagogue in the US South, and ''Babel'', which stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett as tragedy-stricken tourists in Morocco.

The festival will kick off with the world premiere of ''The Journals of Knud Rasmussen'', based on the writings of a 1920s Danish ethnographer about the clash of cultures between European Arctic explorers and Inuit natives.

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