‘I think this year’s [number of] accreditations will be a little bit higher because a lot of people will be coming to both [the Montreal and Toronto film festivals],’ says International Film Market director Gilles Beriault. ‘A couple days of overlap will help because people won’t have to make a choice between Montreal [Aug. 27 to Sept. 7] and Toronto [Sept. 4-13].’

Registration at the market is expected to be around 900, with about half from overseas.

The program includes International Market Coproduction sessions, basically pitch events, to be held Sept. 3-4 in the Salon Alfred Rouleau of the Wyndham Hotel, Montreal World Film Festival headquarters.

The New Technologies Forum will display a wide range of audiovisual products and presentations by Avid, Technicolor and Kodak, as well as offer a series of invitation-only tours of Mel’s Cite du Cinema. The conference component of the New Technologies program (Sept. 4-5 at Salon Hospitalite) will key on ‘The Future of Digital Pictures,’ with the focus on the implications for directors and producers.

Confirmed delegates for the market include: Celestial Movies’ Tony Watts, a British ex-pat in Hong Kong who buys films for satellite TV; Lu Ying, a producer with China’s largest studio, Beijing Radio, Film & Television Group; John Hodges, a distributor with Focus Features, a specialty unit of Universal Pictures; James Eowan, Seventh Art Releasing; Jim Byerley, a New York City-based acquisitions expert with HBO; and Veronique Courtois, a buyer of foreign and specialty product with Santa Monica’s Strand Releasing.

Also attending: Valencia, CA-based Tom Rooker of Rock Creek Productions, associated with numerous Clint Eastwood films; Jonathan Wolf, the American Film Marketing Association; Dylan Leiner, Sony Pictures Classics; Parker Stanberry, a senior buyer with Miramax Films; and Vance Van Petten, exec director of the Producers Guild of America.

Other big-name guests include Jerome Paillard, director of the Cannes Film Market; Sabine Carion, buyer with broadcaster France 2; Eva Kammerer of Germany’s ZDF Television; Bill Banning, buyer/distributor with U.S. repertory exhibitor Roxie Releasing; and Victor Loewy, CEO of Alliance Atlantis’ Motion Picture Distribution Group.

‘We’re getting a lot of people from the emerging Eastern European territories who are really getting it together now and buying product – countries [such as] Poland and Hungary,’ says Beriault. ‘We also have some of the top companies from Russia and the Czech Republic.’

Some 50 exhibitors are expected to attend this year’s IFM, including many of the major European film promotion groups representing 17 countries, as well as Media Luna from Germany, Montreal’s La Fete Productions, Toronto-based Alliance Atlantis and the National Film Board.