Twenty-six movies from around the world will have a ‘second unveiling’ at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which has picked its latest round of titles from the best of Cannes, Berlin and other stops on the festival circuit.

Ken Loach’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley, winner of the Cannes Palme d’Or, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel, which took three prizes including best director at Cannes, are among the titles now set for the 10-day festival in September.

‘Our primary allegiance at the festival is to our loyal audiences,’ said codirector Noah Cowan in a statement. ‘To that end, we select the very best films from key, primarily European festivals which run before our own.’

The episodic drama Babel stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, and will screen as a TIFF Special Presentation. Pitt is reportedly in talks to attend the screening. Barley recounts the Irish civil war of the 1920s and is part of the Masters program.

Also on the list: The Caiman by Italy’s Nanni Moretti, about a down-and-out movie producer, and Lights in the Dusk by Aki Kaurismäki, the closing entry in a trilogy about the social ills of Finland.

The sole documentary named so far, Egypt’s These Girls (not to be confused with the 2005 selection of the same name) by Tahani Rached, follows young girls living on the streets of Cairo, and is part of the Real to Reel lineup.

In the Contemporary World Cinema program, Cannes jury prize winner Red Road, about a woman out for revenge against the man who destroyed her family, screens alongside 12:08 East of Bucharest, which won the Camera d’Or – about the ouster of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Invisible Waves by Pen-ek Ratanaruang is a noir thriller set in post-tsunami Asia – and played earlier this year to some acclaim in Berlin, Bangkok and Hong Kong – while the China/France copro Summer Palace follows a young girl from her village to the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square. Palace was up for this year’s Palme d’Or, but was withdrawn from competition when officials in Beijing withheld their stamp of approval, citing problems with the light and sound quality. It is the first Chinese-made movie to deal with the Tiananmen incident.

The Polish crime drama Retrieval will also screen in Contemporary World Cinema, along with Norway’s The Bothersome Man, the Argentine prison-break thriller Crónica de una fuga and the love triangle Summer ’04 by Germany’s Stefan Krohmer.

TIFF organizers will announce more picks in the weeks to come. The festival will open on Sept. 7 with the previously announced debut of The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, by Nunavut filmmakers Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn.

www.e.bell.ca/filmfest/2006