Istvan Szabo will open the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival with his latest picture Being Julia, a 1930s period piece about sex and lies in the stage world, starring Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons.

‘We are thrilled,’ says festival head Piers Handling. ‘Szabo has made a tremendously playful and uplifting film, capturing the effervescence of 1930s theatrical life with graceful panache.’

The pic shot in London last summer under producer Robert Lantos and is based on the novel Theatre by Somerset Maugham, adapted by The Pianist’s Ronald Harwood. Szabo’s previous film Sunshine, also backed by Lantos, played at TIFF in 1999.

TIFF has also added three theaters to its roster, and this fall will make use of Toronto’s Paramount Theatre – a glitzy multiplex in the city’s entertainment district – plus screens at nearby Ryerson University and the Art Gallery of Ontario.

-www.e.bell.ca/filmfest