The Toronto International Film Festival has added six films to its Special Presentations line-up for 2008.

The films include four world premieres: Steve Jacobs’ Disgrace, Vicente Amorim’s Good, Spike Lee’s Miracle At St Anna, and Peter Sollett’s Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

North American premieres are Paolo Sorrentino’s Cannes jury prize-winner Il Divo and Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker.

Disgrace (Australia/South Africa) is an adaptation of the Booker-winning JM Coetzee novel about a Cape Town professor (John Malkovich) who visits his daughter on her rural farm in the Eastern Cape and becomes the victim of violence.

Good (UK/Hungary) stars Viggo Mortensen as a 1930s professor whose novel is suddenly lauded by political figures.

Miracle At St Anna, which had been tipped to show in Venice, is Spike Lee’s Italy-set story of four black American soldiers in Tuscany during WWII. The cast features Starring Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller, Matteo Sciabordi, John Leguizamo and Joseph Gordon Levitt.

Comedy Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist is about two people, played by Michael Cera and Kat Dennings, who are brought together one night by a love of the same music.

Cannes hit Il Divo stars Toni Servillo as controversial Italian politician Giulio Andreotti.

The Hurt Locker stars Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce, David Morse, Jeremy Renner and Christian Camargo as members of an elite Army bomb squad unit in Iraq.

The festival runs Sept 4-13.

Source: Screen Daily

TORONTO — The Toronto International Film Festival made way for some Cannes heavyweights Thursday, unveiling Special Presentation slots for Laurent Cantet’s Palme d’Or winner “The Class” and Matteo Garrone’s Grand Prix winner “Gomorrah” among a group of about two dozen North American premieres.

Arnaud Desplechin’s “Un conte de Noel” and Canadian helmer Atom Egoyan’s “Adoration” — both Cannes Competition titles — also will get the red-carpet treatment in Toronto, alongside South Korean filmmaker Kim Jee-woon’s Out of Competition “The Good, the Bad and the Weird.”

Other Cannes entries making their Canadian splash include the Dardennes brothers’ “Lorna’s Silence,” best screenplay winner in Cannes; Jerzy Skolimowksi’s “Four Nights With Anna”; Terence Davies’ “Of Time and the City”; Jia Zhang-ke’s “24 City”; and “Three Monkeys,” which earned director Nuri Bilge Ceylan the best director trophy.

The quintet has been programmed as part of Toronto’s Masters sidebar.

On the documentary side, films headed for Toronto include “Blind Loves,” from Slovakian director Juraj Lehotsky, Lisandro Alonso’s “Liverpool” and “Service,” by Brillante Mendoza.

Cannes Competition titles from Brazil — Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas’ “Linha de Passe” and Pablo Trapero’s “Lion’s Den” — headline a Contemporary World Cinema sidebar that includes Federico Veiroj’s “Acne,” Bent Hamer’s “O’Horten,” Amos Kollek’s “Restless” and Gotz Spielmann’s “Revanche.”

The Discovery program will feature Steve McQueen’s “Hunger,” which earned the Camera d’Or in Cannes, U.S. filmmaker Barry Jenkins’ “Medicine for Melancholy,” Argentinean director Gabriel Medina’s “The Paranoids,” Pablo Aguero’s “Salamandra,” Matthew Newton’s “Three Blind Mice,” Pablo Larrain’s “Tony Manero” and Sergey Dvortsevoy’s “Tulpan.”

Rounding out the Toronto lineup is yet another Cannes Competition title — Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir” — which will compete in the Vanguard section.

The 33rd Toronto International Film Festival will run Sept. 4-13.

Source: Hollywood Reporter