Here’s hoping TIFF this year is a face-off between global and Canadian indie movies, on Canada’s home turf.

Canadian directors making noise in Toronto next month will include Ed Gass-Donnelly, Atom Egoyan, Michael Snow, Xavier Dolan. Brandon Cronenberg, Brian D. Johnson, Bruce LaBruce, Guy Maddin, Bruce McDonald, Quebec auteurs Denis Côté and Denis Villeneuve, Ingrid Veninger, Jacob Tierney, Louis Bélanger and Michael McGowan, whose Score: A Hockey Musical will launch the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9.

The Canuck contingent will need to be loud. Toronto fest organizers have drawn to the city for their 35th edition filmmaker heavyweights like Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen, Danny Boyle, Darren Aronofsky, David Schwimmer, Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Werner Herzog and Vincent Gallo, a late addition to TIFF’s Visions sidebar with his new film Promises Written in Water.

As for the Hollywood parade set to descend on Toronto for its September 9 to 19, confirmed guests include Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Hilary Swank, Robert De Niro, Clive Owen, Helen Mirren, Natalie Portman, Mickey Rourke, Will Ferrell, Megan Fox and Javier Bardem.
Of this, TIFF will no doubt provide the next crop of Oscar contenders, and quite possibly winners at the end of the current awards season.

Fest organizers will also be looking for some of that Hollywood star wattage to encircle and enter Bell Lightbox, their year-round headquarters set to open on September 12.

After earlier rolling out its extensive slate of star-driven U.S. studio and indie titles, Toronto on Tuesday unveiled its 45-film lineup for its Contemporary World Cinema sidebar.

The mostly European and Asian filmmaker lineup includes the latest films from Tom Tykwer, Tsui Hark, Marion Hansel, Feng Xiaogang, Hong Sangsoo, Ann Hui, Gabriel Range and Khalo Matabane.

This year’s lineup includes world bows for 22nd of May, from Belgian director Koen Mortier, British director Debs Gardner-Paterson’s Africa United, Behind Blue Skies, from Swedish director Hannes Holm, and Blessed Events, from Germany’s Isabelle Stever.

And Chinese director Feng Xiaogang is bringing Aftershock, an action pic co-produced by Imax.

Also from Canada in the CWC sidebar is À l’Origine d’Un Cri, Robin Aubert’s portrait of three generations of men from the same family drunkenly travelling across the Quebec countryside.

Discovery titles added Tuesday include world premieres for Autumn, by Indian director Aamir Bashir, Beautiful Boy, by U.S. director Shawn Ku, and starring Michael Sheen and Maria Bello, and the Uma Thurman-starrer Ceremony, by American filmmaker Max Winkler.

This year’s Masters series added 10 titles Tuesdays, including world bows for Amos Gitai’s Roses a Credit and the North American bows for Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Oscar winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, French director Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialism, controversial director Catherine Breillat’s The Sleeping Beauty, also from France and British filmmaker Ken Loach’s Route Irish.

And the hi-octane Mavericks sidebar will feature Edward Norton interview The Boss Bruce Springsteen, the subject of a documentary,  Canadian NBA legend Steve Nash introducing his Terry Fox biopic Into the Wind, and doc maker Michael Moore talking to British director Ken Loach and Paul Laverty about politics and cinema.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates will also share the stage with Davis Guggenheim, director of An Inconvenient Truth, to talk about the crisis in American education, the subject of Guggenheim’s latest doc, Superman.

Toronto earlier unveiled its Canadian film lineup, which includes world bows for Mike Goldbach’s Daydream Nation, Deborah Chow’s High Cost of Living, Ryan Redford’s Oliver Sherman, and A Married Couple, by the late Allan King, to feature in the Canadian Open Vault section.