The spotlight will be on the familiar faces of David Cronenberg, Denys Arcand and François Girard at the 32nd Toronto International Film Festival, which on Tuesday unveiled its lineup of homegrown fare at a crowded press conference at the Royal York hotel.

Arcand’s comedy L’Âge des ténèbres (Days of Darkness), the follow-up to his Academy Award-winning Les invasions barbares, will play as a gala presentation alongside Cronenberg’s new thriller Eastern Promises, starring Viggo Mortensen.

‘I don’t feel that I’ve actually made the movie until it has been shown at the Toronto International Film Festival,’ Cronenberg said at the unveiling. The baron of blood was joined by Mortensen and Promises producer Robert Lantos, who said he was ‘very happy’ to be back in the festival. Another Lantos project, Jeremy Podeswa’s Fugitive Pieces, will open the festival, which runs Sept. 6-15.

TIFF unveiled dozens of films from its Canadian, shorts, Special Presentation and Contemporary World Cinema programs. Among the special presentations this year are Guy Maddin’s fantasy doc My Winnipeg, Roger Spottiswoode’s Roméo Dallaire biopic Shake Hands with the Devil and Adam Vollick’s Here Is What Is, about music industry icon Daniel Lanois.

Also on the list is Girard’s $35-million drama Silk, his first film since 1998’s award-winning The Red Violin. Silk producer Niv Fichman of Toronto’s Rhombus Media (Snow Cake, Childstar) says they saved their launch for the Toronto fest, to build up publicity and promotion for the film’s Sept. 21 release in the U.S. and Canada.

‘We were ready to go before…we could have submitted to other places, but we decided not to because we wanted to wait for TIFF,’ he says. Silk, a Canada/France/Italy copro, stars Keira Knightley (the Pirates of the Caribbean films), Michael Pitt (Murder by Numbers) and Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2).

Rounding out the special presentations is Toronto director Clement Virgo’s Halifax-shot drama Poor Boy’s Game, fresh off its world premiere at Berlin earlier this year. Virgo says playing at Toronto is a filmmaker’s dream because of the audiences it attracts.

‘Film audiences are very open here, and that’s what separates Toronto from a lot of other festivals…your film is almost guaranteed to sell out,’ he says.

The Canada First! program this year includes eight features by new filmmakers, and will open with Martin Gero’s comedy Young People F*cking. Festival organizers also announced that famed Montreal director/DOP Michel Brault (Mon oncle Antoine, Les ordres) will be honored with a retrospective of his work.