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George Clooney, Brad Pitt highlight Toronto film festival lineup

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George Clooney and Brad Pitt will highlight a star-studded lineup at the Toronto International Film Festival, which opens Sept. 8.

Organizers said Tuesday morning that the festival will feature the world premieres of Bennett Miller’s ‘Moneyball,’ the baseball drama starring Pitt; Fernando Meirelles’ ‘360,’ a set of interlocking European-set stories starring Jude Law and Anthony Hopkins; Alexander Payne’s ‘The Descendants,’ starring Clooney; and Jim Field Smith’s ‘Butter,’ a dramatic comedy featuring Jennifer Garner. Oren Moverman’s police drama ‘Rampart,’ Jonathan Levine’s cancer comedy ‘50/50’ and Marc Forster’s fact-based drama ‘Machine Gun Preacher’ are also among the world premieres.

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The festival will also offer North American premieres for David Cronenberg’s historical drama ‘A Dangerous Method,’ which stars Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud and Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung; Clooney’s ‘The Ides of March,’ an adaptation of the stage play starring Clooney and Ryan Gosling; and Madonna’s ‘W.E.,’ a romantic drama starring Abbie Cornish.

That means the North American films will probably travel to the Venice International Film Festival, but not the Telluride Film Festival that immediately precedes Toronto. Organizers are expected to announce new batches of titles in the weeks to come.

The vast 11-day Canadian gathering has become an important platform for awards launches, though it competes in a crowded late-summer window with the Telluride and Venice film festivals, occasionally overlapping with those festivals. Last year Toronto was an important early stop of award-season powerhouses ‘Black Swan’ and ‘The King’s Speech,’ among others.

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-- Steven Zeitchik

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