The prestige-movie season gets under way in Toronto

Question: Where will George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Ang Lee, Jodie Foster, Jude Law, Reese Witherspoon, Woody Allen, Viggo Mortensen, Jimmy Carter and I be, for the next week or so?

Answer: The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), today-Sept. 15, where the famous, the gifted, the obscure (that's me) and the publicists gather to watch, celebrate and promote hundreds of movies, many of which will appear on Seattle screens later this fall and winter.

TIFF, now in its 32nd year, has long been considered a launching pad for the prestige-movie season. In recent years, acclaimed films like "Babel," "Little Children," "Volver," "Brokeback Mountain," "Walk the Line," "Capote," "Ray" and "Sideways" made their debuts at the Toronto fest. Recent movies with a Northwest pedigree, like "The Heart of the Game," "Outsourced," "Brand Upon the Brain!" and "Kurt Cobain About a Son" were also introduced to the world at TIFF.

And celebrities, generally accompanied by teams of handlers, turn up in droves to flog their films, causing the locals in this otherwise orderly city to amass at roped-off hotel and theater entrances, hoping for a star sighting. Even innocent sunglass-wearing journalists, such as myself, get accustomed to receiving an excited once-over from crowds while exiting a festival venue — followed quickly by disappointed expressions as they realize, alas, that I'm not Keira Knightley. (Yes, Keira will be there. No, nobody's likely to mistake her for me, or vice versa.)

So, as I make my way through Toronto's crowded sidewalks to catch a mere handful of the festival's 349 films from 55 countries, here's a look at what might be making the headlines, on and off the red carpet.

Directors to watch

Ang Lee follows up "Brokeback Mountain" with "Lust, Caution," a drama set in pre-Revolution Shanghai among the anti-fascist movement. Based on a short story by Eileen Chang, the film stars Tony Leung Chiu Wai ("In the Mood for Love"), Tang Wei and Joan Chen.

Australian filmmaker Gillian Armstrong, who hasn't made a feature film since 2001's "Charlotte Gray," returns with "Death Defying Acts," a story of magician Harry Houdini (played by Guy Pearce) and a Scottish psychic (Catherine Zeta-Jones).

Joel and Ethan Coen will be in Toronto with "No Country for Old Men," based on the Cormac McCarthy novel and fresh from the Cannes Film Festival. Woody Allen will unveil his latest British-set drama, "Cassandra's Dream," starring Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell. David Cronenberg ("A History of Violence"), the Canadian master of chills whose works are often showcased at TIFF, returns with "Eastern Promises," with Viggo Mortensen as a man caught up in London's Russian mob.

Ken Loach follows his remarkable Irish film "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" with "It's a Free World ... ," a drama about a young woman who opens a recruiting agency for inexpensive Eastern European migrant laborers. Sean Penn directs an adaptation of Jon Krakauer's book "Into the Wild," starring Emile Hirsch as a young man who marches resolutely into the Alaskan wilderness.

A few familiar faces take a turn at the other side of the camera. Helen Hunt makes her directing debut with "Then She Found Me," an adaptation of Elinor Lipman's comic novel about a woman (played by Hunt) who finds her long-lost birth mother (Bette Midler). And Irish-born actor Stuart Townsend ("Shooting Fish") takes on a familiar subject: "Battle in Seattle," filmed here and in Vancouver, B.C., takes place on Seattle's streets during the 1999 WTO meeting.

Actors

Reese Witherspoon follows up her Oscar-winning work in "Walk the Line" (seen in Toronto two years ago) by starring in "Rendition," as a wife determined to free her Egyptian-American husband, a suspected terrorist, from U.S. military custody. Gavin Hood ("Tsotsi") directs; Jake Gyllenhaal and Meryl Streep co-star. George Clooney plays a high-powered attorney in "Michael Clayton," a twisty-sounding legal thriller co-starring Tilda Swinton (who's always fabulous), Tom Wilkinson (ditto) and Sydney Pollack.

Nine years after "Elizabeth" brought her first Oscar nomination, Cate Blanchett comes to Toronto with "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," Shekhar Kapur's sequel to his 1998 historical drama. Blanchett will also appear in Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There" as one of many personas of Bob Dylan. (Others are played by Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Richard Gere. Haynes' Dylan, apparently, is a complex fellow.)

Jodie Foster stars in Neil Jordan's "The Brave One," about a woman turned vigilante after she is the victim of a violent crime. Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman ("Capote") play a pair of siblings coping with an ailing father in "The Savages," directed by Tamara Jenkins. Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth portray a father and son in Anand Tucker's "And When Did You Last See Your Father?" based on the memoir by Blake Morrison. Jude Law and Michael Caine team up for Kenneth Branagh's remake of "Sleuth," in which two men face off after one has stolen away the other's wife.

Documentaries

Jonathan Demme directs "Man from Plains," a portrait of former President Jimmy Carter, focusing on the reaction to Carter's controversial book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." Michael Moore returns with "Captain Mike Across America," depicting the polarizing filmmaker's journey across the country to mobilize young voters in 2004. "My Kid Could Paint That," directed by Amir Bar-Lev, examines the strange tale of a 4-year-old art prodigy, raising questions about modern art, loyalty and truth along the way.

Kevin Macdonald, whose documentary work includes "One Day in September" and "Touching the Void," comes to Toronto with "My Enemy's Enemy," about notorious Nazi Klaus Barbie. And Werner Herzog ("Grizzly Man") visits a South Pole research community for "Encounters at the End of the World."

These are just a few of the offerings at North America's most prestigious film festival, and I'll be catching as many of them as time and bleary eyes will allow. Watch for daily dispatches on www.seattletimes.com/entertainment; I'll try to bring the festival to your screen. (Sorry, though: I can't bring Clooney.)

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com