Illicit love and Lebanon war films added to TIFF

Illicit love stories and an insider's account of the Lebanon-Israeli war have been added to the scheduleat the Toronto International Film Festival.

TIFF organizers announced 11 films for the Contemporary World Cinema program andseven in the experimentalVisions program on Thursday.

Filmmakers from Bangladesh, Iran, Finland, Australia and Thailand have been added to the lineup.

Heiran, a film from Iranian director Shalizeh Arefpour about an Iranian girl who scandalizes her family by falling in love with an immigrant student from Afghanistan, is making its world premiere.

Tilda Swinton plays a woman who conceives a passion for a much younger man in Italian director Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love,and a university student seeks sex through newspaper ads in Slovenian Girl.

Lebanon, by Samuel Maoz of Israel, is a story of the 1982 Lebanon war, likethe acclaimed Waltz with Bashir, a big hit atlast year'sTIFF.The film, scheduled for the Visions section,is about a young tank crew that loses its way amid the chaos of war.

Two U.S. films in this section focus on gang stories including Alan Jacobs's Down for Life, about a 15-year-old Latina gang leader who attempts to leave gang life, andTrash Humpers, in whichinnovative filmmaker Harmony Korine returns to the handheld technique he used in Gummo.

Among the more exotic fare are:

• Blessed, by Ana Kokkinos of Australia, about seven childrenwandering urban streets.
• Beyond the Circle, by Golam Rabbany Biplob of Bangladesh,about a village musician who gets swept up in the market economy of Dhaka.
• Sawasdee Bangkok, in which four Thai directors tell tales of the city.
• To the Sea, by Pedro Gonzlez-Rubio of Mexico, in which a man and his half-Italian son journey to the second-largest coral reef on the planet.