Toronto International Film Festival announces first batch of featured titles

Organizers of this year's Toronto International Film Festival made their first programming announcement of the year on Tuesday, introducing a batch of titles that includes the latest from Portugal's Manoel de Oliveira and23 other noted titles from recent festivals in Cannes, Berlin and other cities.

De Oliveira's Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl, the latest film from the world's oldest filmmaker (he turns 101 this year), will make its North American premiere during the 34th edition of the Toronto festival this September.

The drama, a French-Portuguese-Spanish co-production, tells the story of a man who falls in love with a blond woman across the street.

It will be a part of the Toronto festival's Masters program, along with Les Herbes Folles by France's Alain Resnais and Air Doll by Japan's Hirokazu Kore-eda.

Initial titles hailing from all over the globe were also announced for the Contemporary World Cinema, Discovery, Visions andVanguard programs, including films from the likes of Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, South Korea's Hong Sang-soo and Australian Warwick Thornton, whose debut, Samson and Delilah, picked up the prestigious Camera d'Or at Cannes.

New program: great films set in great cities

Festival co-director Cameron Bailey also announced on Tuesday the introduction of a new program: City to City.

The program will examine the changing landscape of one featured metropolis each year by showcasing films from and about the chosen city.

"Films about cities show us what cities have been and what they can become," Bailey said in a statement.

"We need to take a moment to think about what it means to live in these large and growing communities, with increasingly diverse and multicultural populations, and to consider how a city's identity is perpetually in flux.

"The City to City program will screen great films set in great cities, allowing us to discover foreign urban environments while also enabling us to think more about our own."

Tel Aviv, which is celebrating its 100th birthday in 2009, was selected for the inaugural edition, with a lineup 10 films to be announced later this summer.

Further lineup announcements are expected throughout the summer, with tickets for the Toronto festival going on sale in July.

The 34th annual Toronto International Film Festival takes place Sept. 10-19.