The U.S. media is getting a jump on films to be seen at next week’s Toronto International Film Festival via the first-ever advance press screenings in Los Angeles and New York.

A festival spokesman says the sneak peeks at potential crowd pleasers aims to build word of mouth for Toronto titles among the American media ahead of the festival, which kicks off on Sept. 6.

Toronto has long offered advance screenings of choice films to local press, while foreign media have had to wait until the festival begins to attend its often capacity-filled press and industry screenings.

Canadian films unspooling in Los Angeles this week include two Seville Pictures titles: Roger Spottiswoode’s Shake Hands With the Devil and Richie Mehta’s Amal. Also screening are Israeli director Avi Nesher’s The Secrets and Blind by Dutch filmmaker Tamar van den Dop.

New York film writers are getting sneak previews of world premieres like Nobuhiro Yamashita’s A Gentle Breeze in the Village, Nina Davenport’s Operation Filmmaker and Hana Makhmalbaf’s Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame, from Iran.

David Miller, a producer on Amal seeking a U.S. sale in Toronto, welcomed the exclusive advance screening of his film.

‘As a producer of a film, you hope that the press and industry will get out to see the film at the festival. That’s not always the case, and the fact that Toronto is proactive and screening Amal ahead of the festival is a good thing,’ he says.

The stateside screenings wrap Friday, before American film writers gather at Telluride to, again, see a host of films booked into Toronto.