‘Intense’ is the word that Piers Handling chooses to summarize the ‘international complexion’ for this year’s TIFF, which unspools 335 films from 64 countries over 10 intense days, Sept. 10-20.

‘It feels deeper this year,’ says Handling, director and CEO of TIFF. ‘It’s an intense festival. There are a lot of things on people’s minds – we live in a troubled world and that’s reflected in the films.’

This special report showcases all the Canadian films in TIFF and Canada’s own vedettes (and newcomers), who will be shoulder-to-shoulder amongst stars from around the globe.

All gala film directors will be in attendance during the celluloid bonanza, as will a bevy of heavy-hitters such as George Clooney, to promote their latest yarns.

Handling says he was ‘really impressed’ with Clooney’s vehicle The Men Who Stare at Goats, comparing it to Iraq dramas: ‘It feels more like Three Kings… than The Hurt Locker; it’s kind of like Hunter S. Thompson meets Three Kings.’

Canada’s own Christopher Plummer stars alongside the late Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law in director Terry Gilliam’s Canada/U.K. copro The Imaginarium of

Doctor Parnassus (see story, p. 16) and will also be in Toronto to be inducted into Playback’s Canadian Film and Television Hall of Fame.

Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson will be on hand for the red-carpet gala of Atom Egoyan’s Chloe (see story, p.18), technically a French film because of its financing.

And Handling confirms that this year’s international star power will rival last year’s and include Americans such as Matt Damon (The Informant!) and Nicolas Cage (for Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans); Europe’s sizzling Clive Owen (The Boys Are Back), Naomi Watts (Mother and Child) and Jennifer Connelly (Creation); as well as the legendary thespian Omar Sharif (The Traveller, set in Egypt), who ‘loves Toronto and was really hoping his film would be in the festival here.’

Toronto’s world film buff adds that ‘key acquisitions’ made ‘post- Cannes’ include North American or world premieres of I Am Love, The Disappearance of Alice Creed and City of Life and Death Nanjing Nanjing (about the Rape of Nanking in 1937). There are also ‘a bunch of films [that were completed since the Riviera fest wrapped] that deal with history and the immediate past.’

The Italian picture Vincere (Marco Bellocchio’s film about Mussolini’s ‘early life and first marriage’) is an ‘interesting metaphor for [current Italian Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi,’ according to Handling.

History is also present in Germany’s The Day Will Come, which is ‘set in the present day but has the German Red Brigade and its past catching up,’ notes Handling, who also really likes

The Front Line, ‘which is to the left of the Red Brigade in the ’70s.’

Handling says history buffs will also enjoy Glorious 39, ‘which deals with pre-war London in the summer of 1939, before the war breaks out and what was going on in England at that time.’

Also stay tuned for premiers of European films which question the existence of God – such as the TIFF opening-night film from the U.K., Creation (Christopher Dunkin and Paul Betty), or Bruno Dumont’s Hadewijch, from France. These pictures ultimately examine the ‘tension between believers and people who are more non-believers or more rational in terms of their beliefs,’ Handling notes.