Judd Apatow’s Funny People will headline the 13th edition of the Just for Laughs Film Festival, a cinematic sidebar of Montreal’s popular comedy festival. The festival runs July 10-28. Apatow, director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, was the toast of last year’s event. Starring Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen and Leslie Mann, Funny People screens July 25 at Montreal’s Imperial Theatre in advance of its July 31 opening.

Among the Canadian filmmakers presenting films is screenwriter Ken Scott, writer of such hits as The Rocket and Seducing Doctor Lewis, who makes his directorial debut with Les doigts croches, starring Roy Dupuis as the head of a gang of aging criminals who are offered a last chance at an honest life. The film will close the festival in the presence of cast and crew. Alliance Vivafilm is releasing the film in Canada.

Other titles screening include Bobcat Goldthwait’s World’s Greatest Dad, starring Robin Williams as a heartbroken father who fakes a suicide note after his son’s embarrassingly accidental death; Broken Lizard’s The Slammin’ Salmon, featuring Michael Clarke Duncan and members of the comedy troupe; Nicholas Jasenovec’s Sundance title Paper Heart, starring Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera; and Lynn Shelton’s SXSW bromance Humpday, starring Joshua Leonard and Mark Duplass as two friends who on a dare enter the world of gay porn.

Belgian filmmaker Étienne Chatiliez presents Agathe Cléry, starring Anthony Kavanagh and two-time César winner Valérie Lemercier, while France’s Michel Hazanavicius screens his local hit OSS 117: Lost in Rio, a spy spoof starring Jean Dujardin. The film drew 2.5 million admissions on release in France.

The festival is this year expanding its programming, teaming with the National Film Board to present a number of titles at the NFB’s CineRobotheque. Titles in the sidebar program include Albert Nerenberg’s Laughology, a documentary on the science and history of laughter, and More Than Me, starring The Hangover‘s Zach Galifianakis as an office drone who is trying to ignore the fact that his co-workers are literally exploding from stress.

As well, Just for Laughs is reprising its Comedy Conference, launched last year, an industry-led series of discussions on the serious business of making people laugh. Apatow signed a development deal with Hamilton comedian Bo Burnham after Burnham’s performance at last year’s Just for Laughs. Indeed, Burnham makes an appearance in Funny People.

‘Montreal’s becoming a one-stop shop for comedy,’ said Just for Laughs Film Festival producer Paul Ronca in an interview with Playback Daily. ‘There’s a live component, a film component, a conference component and an industry initiative to bring in cool web people as we did last year. We’re trying to bring everything that is comedy in one place, and hopefully people will connect and end up doing business together.’

Confirmed guests include Funny People co-stars Aubrey Plaza and Aziz Ansari, who won the ‘Best Stand-up’ Jury Award at HBO’s Comedy Arts Festival in 2006; director Bobcat Goldthwait, Joshua Leonard, Charlyne Yi and Anthony Kavanagh.