The 31st annual World Film Festival will open Aug. 23 with a screening of the local comedy Bluff by first-time feature filmmakers Simon-Olivier Fecteau and Marc-André Lavoie, and starring Rémy Girard and Marc Messier.

The WFF has traditionally served as a key launch pad for the National Film Board, and this year will be no exception, with the board premiering six shorts, three feature docs and one ‘alternative drama.’ In Family Motel, director Helene Klodawsky uses improvisational techniques to create a unique drama about a group of Somalian refugees and their struggle to make good in Canada.

Meanwhile, David Paperny’s doc Confessions of an Innocent Man tells the harrowing story of William Sampson, who was imprisoned and tortured in a Saudi jail for 31 months, held for a crime he did not commit. Jason Young profiles renowned bank robber and heroin addict Stephen Reid in Inside Time.

International fare at the fest will include the world premiere of Beautiful Bitch, director Martin Theo Krieger’s German/Romanian copro about a 15-year-old girl who escapes the street life in Bucharest only to find life in Germany is little better.

Themes of the Iraq war will touch this year’s WFF, with entries such as Dol (aka The Valley of the Tambourines), Hiner Saleem’s tale of a man who must flee to war-torn Iraq from Turkey after he gets into a skirmish with soldiers.

Frenchman Martin Valente’s eagerly awaited Fragile(s) will make its North American debut. The feature follows how the intimate and messy connections of six characters unravel.