I should have suspected something was up when chatting with Andrew late last night about the Toronto International Film Festival this year, and noticing that the website was currently under maintenance. This morning, the TIFFG announced the ‘festival of festivals’ titles, their yearly aggregate of many films that have played around the world at other big continental festivals like Berlin and Cannes.

Toronto remains styling itself the largest and most important North American Film Festival, and they bring the variety and the quality only hinted at in this early international list. Personally, I’m most looking forward to Hiroakazu Kore-Eda‘s Air Doll. A film that promises to be a heck-uv-a-lot better than Lars and The Real Girl, when the sex doll actually comes to life. Other Asian titles include new films from Tsai-Ming Liang, Hong Sang-Soo, and Pen-ek Ratanaruang and the much acclaimed Karaoke out of Malaysia. I am quite glad to see TIFF heavily sampling The Orient from which titles seemed a bit sparse in last years edition. I must confess much ignorance to the European and Middle Eastern cinema in the below line-up, but fans of Red Road can rejoice, as Andrea Arnold returns with her follow-up, Fish Tank. I will be popping around the web to get a handle on these titles, note that Kazakhstan has a film in there, with no sign of SBC.

TIFF always begins with a big title list like the below just before passes/packages/tickets go on sale, in the 2009 edition of TIFF which runs between September 10-19th, Passes are going on sale on July 6th.

Full list of titles, directors and one sentence description are tucked under the seat.

Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl
Manoel de Oliveira
France/Portugal/Spain
North American Premiere
Famed filmmaker Oliveira, who celebrates his 101st birthday this year, tells the tale of Macario’s obsession with the enticing blond he spies from his window. Little does he know that she will end up stealing much more than his heart.

Les Herbes Folles
Alain Resnais
France
North American Premiere
From modernist master Alain Resnais comes a romantic adventure based around the simple act of losing a wallet.

Air Doll
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Japan
North American Premiere
This compelling tale of a blow-up doll that becomes a real person and abandons her status of mere sex object comes to life with the superb performance of Korean actress Bae Doo-na.

Face
Tsai Ming-liang
France/Taiwan/The Netherlands/Belgium
North American Premiere
A tableau vivant adorned with Tsai Ming-Liang’s signature aesthetic portrays a special homage to the Nouvelle Vague and the Louvre, which co-produced the film and hosted its shooting.

Independencia
Raya Martin
France
North American Premiere
Mimicking early silent films, Independencia creates a lush metaphor that plays with cinematic illusions and the cultural and mythical history of the Philippines.

Irène
Alain Cavalier
France
North American Premiere
Filmmaker Alain Cavalier turns his personal grief of becoming a widower into a first-person subjective documentary that focuses on his diary entries.

Karaoke
Chris Chong Chan Fui
Malaysia
North American Premiere
Poetic, observant and allegorical, Karaoke juxtaposes a young man’s idealism with the reality of a changing Malaysia through karaoke videos.

Nymph
Pen-Ek Ratanaruang
Thailand
North American Premiere
A haunting supernatural love affair set in a mysterious forest between a nymph and a couple who have drifted apart.

To Die Like a Man
João Pedro Rodrigue
Portugal/France
North American Premiere
In order to forgive and be forgiven for the slights endured over a long life as a transsexual club performer, Tonia devolves her body back into a male form and seeks reconciliation with her estranged son.

Fish Tank
Andrea Arnold
United Kingdom
North American Premiere
Andrea Arnold’s assured follow-up to Red Road is a taboo-breaking love story about a violent teenaged girl transformed by desire for her mother’s new boyfriend.

Gigante
Adrian Biniez
Uruguay/Germany/Argentina/The Netherlands
North American Premiere
Security guard Jara falls in love as he supervises staff through the closed-circuit cameras at a supermarket. First voyeur, then guardian angel, he protects and pursues the cleaning woman who has unknowingly captured his heart.

The Happiest Girl in the World
Radu Jude
Romania/The Netherlands
North American Premiere
Family conflict produces comedy in this story of a young girl who wins a car in a lottery and her scheming parents who insist on selling it.

Kelin
Ermek Tursunov
Kazakhstan
North American Premiere
A love story among the ragged steppes of ancient Kazakhstan is told in beautiful and poetic images, as a young love struggles to survive in the face of uncontrollable external factors.

La Pivellina
Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel
Austria/Italy
North American Premiere
A small abandoned girl is sheltered by a circus woman in this tale of courage, loss and togetherness.

Samson and Delilah
Warwick Thornton
Australia
North American Premiere
Teenagers Samson and Delilah live in an isolated Aboriginal community in the Central Australian desert. Their outsider status draws them closer together and they come to depend on each other when tragedy strikes.

Should I Really Do It
Ismail Necmi
Turkey
North American Premiere
The concepts of real life and fiction, documentary and drama, are explored in this real-life feature which follows the unbelievable life of Petra, a German woman living in Turkey.

Eyes Wide Open
Haim Tabakman
Israel
North American Premiere
A gay love story set in the heart of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem, where the belief that love conquers all results in societal pressures and threats of violence.

Huacho
Alejandro Fernandez Almendras
Chile
North American Premiere
A warm family saga which follows 24 hours in the life of a poverty-stricken provincial family in central Chile.

Like You Know It All
Hong Sang-soo
Republic of Korea
North American Premiere
Delightfully comic exploration of the emotional and social geography of an art-house film, directed by Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo.

Lourdes
Jessica Hausner
Austria/France/Germany
North American Premiere
In order to escape her isolation, wheelchair-bound Christine makes a life-changing journey to Lourdes, the iconic site of pilgrimage in the Pyrenees Mountains.

Men on the Bridge
Asli Özge
Germany/Turkey/The Netherlands
North American Premiere
The stories of six men working on an Istanbul bridge are told by the original characters, in this mosaic depicting real persons exposing their lives and aspirations.

My Year Without
Sex Sarah Watt
Australia
North American Premiere
A tender story from Australia highlights the realistic ups and downs of a family in the year following a parent’s emergency medical procedure.

Police
Adjective Corneliu Porumboiu
Romania
North American Premiere
A witty portrait of life in the small town of Vaslui, the sophisticated Police, Adjective builds on the promise of Porumboiu’s debut 12:08, East of Bucharest.

The Time that Remains
Elia Suleiman
France/Belgium/Italy
North American Premiere
This semi-biographic film, divided into four historical episodes, portrays the daily life of Palestinians in 1948 who were considered a minority, even in their homeland.

The Wind Journeys
Ciro Guerra
Colombia
North American Premiere
Ignacio, a former traveling musician, makes one final trip across the country following his wife’s death. He is joined by a teenaged fan, and together they explore the possibilities that life has in store for them.