There are three more days of premieres at Venice before the illustrious Golden Lion prize is announced, but festival season is in mad swing already. Telluride just came to a close, boasting screenings of Todd Haynes' I'm Not There and Jason Reitman's enormously popular Juno. The New York Film Festival kicks off in less than three weeks, and in the interim, the 32nd Toronto International Film Festival shows a staggering 349 films from 55 countries. Arguably the fest to rule them all, Toronto opens today with the world premiere of native Canadian filmmaker Jeremy Podeswa's Fugitive Pieces.

Many of Hollywood's biggest fall dramas are screening. Jodie Foster returns, with a vengance, in Neil Jordan's The Brave One. Joaquin Phoenix also seeks personal justice in Terry George's Reservation Road. Another Oscar winner, Reese Witherspoon, plays a pregnant woman whose Egyptian-born husband is captured and tortured in Gavin Hood's Rendition. Cate Blanchett revisits her role as Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth: The Golden Age opposite Clive Owen. Perennial festival favorite George Clooney continues to make the rounds with Tony Gilroy's legal thriller Michael Clayton. Viggo Mortensen is certain to shock and awe as a tattooed Russian mobster in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, co-starring Naomi Watts.

The line-up also features a slew of literary adaptations. Highly anticipated films include debut director Sarah Gavron's adaption of Monica Ali's best-selling novel Brick Lane and Nothing Is Private by Alan Ball (noted creator of Six Feet Under), the story of a precocious Arab-American girl during the Gulf War, adapted from Alicia Erian's Towelhead. Francois Ozon's first English-language film is an adaptation of the Elizbeth Taylor's classic English novel Angel, starring Romola Garai. Sean Penn based his third movie as a director on Jon Krakauer's memoir Into The Wild. Fresh from a triumphant premiere at Venice, Joe Wright's adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement, starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, will screen again in Toronto. The Coen Brothers travel to dark places in No Country For Old Men, the hardy Cormac McCarthy adaptation which opened to enormous acclaim earlier this year at Cannes.

Other films by prominent filmmakers worth looking for include Carlos Saura's Fados, Amos Gitai's Disengagement, Manoel de Oliveira Christopher Columbus,China's Jiang Wen' The Sun Also Rises, Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress, and films by two genuine independent American filmmakers, John Sayles' Honeydripper, and Mister Lonely, Harmony Korine's first film in eight years.