Jeremy Podeswa’s Fugitive Pieces will open the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 6, having come through a strong field of Canadian contenders to grab the prestigious date.

The Roy Thomson Hall screening will be the world premiere of the page-to-screen adaptation of the Anne Michaels novel, about a seven-year-old boy who moves from escaping the Nazis in World War Two Poland to adulthood in Greece and Canada. Stephen Dillane (The Hours), Rosamund Pike (Pride & Prejudice) and Rade Serbedzija (Batman Begins) lead the cast. TIFF organizers announced the decision on Thursday.

The selection marks the tenth time that a movie produced by Robert Lantos, first with Alliance Communications and now with Serendipity Point Films, has kicked off the festival.

‘Having Fugitive Pieces selected for the opening night of the Toronto Film Festival is an incredible honor,’ said Podeswa, in a statement. His two previous feature films, Eclipse and The Five Senses, also unspooled in Toronto.

‘I am so grateful to the festival and its programmers and organizers who have supported my work from the very start.’

Lantos, Sandra Cunningham, Julia Rosenberg, Takis Veremis and Dionyssis Samiotis share producer credits on the $9.5-million Canada/Greece coproduction.

Fugitive Pieces beat out a stellar list of available Canadian films to open Toronto, led by Deny Arcand’s L’Âge des ténèbres, which is closing Cannes’ official program, David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, starring Naomi Watts and Viggo Mortensen, and François Girard’s period drama Silk, starring Keira Knightley.

Other top-drawer Canadian films now eyeing Toronto berths include Paolo Barzman’s Emotional Arithmetic, Roger Spottiswoode’s Rwanda drama Shake Hands with the Devil and Kari Skogland’s Margaret Laurence adap The Stone Angel, starring Ellen Burstyn.

Toronto has blown hot and cold with its opening-night selections in recent years. Deepa Mehta’s launching the festival in 2005 with Water was judged a critical coup, while last year’s opener, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, directed by Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn, flopped with the first-night audience.