Star-packed films headed to TIFF

Jolie, Clooney among high-profile celebrities with projects in lineup

TORONTO A comedy-drama directed by George Clooney and a biographical thriller helmed by Angelina Jolie are headed to this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Organizers have announced Clooney’s home-invasion comedydrama Suburbicon, written by the Coen brothers and starring Matt Damon and Julianne Moore, is among the titles in the fest.

Also on the schedule is Jolie’s First They Killed My Father, which she also co-wrote based on Cambodian human rights activist Loung Ung’s memoir.

Meanwhile, the Tragically Hip documentary Long Time Running, directed by Canadians Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, will have a gala opening.

Other films on the docket include David Gordon Green’s Boston Marathon bombing drama Stronger, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Regina native Tatiana Maslany.

Darren Aronofsky’s thriller Mother! starring Jennifer Lawrence is also a part of the movie marathon that runs Sept. 7-17.

The schedule has a slew of starpacked biopics, including Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, and I, Tonya, starring Margot Robbie as ice skater Tonya Harding.

In Battle of the Sexes, Steve Carell and Emma Stone star in a story inspired by the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.

The Catcher Was a Spy stars Paul Rudd as Major League Baseball player Moe Berg, who was a spy for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services.

And Michael Greyeyes of Muskeg Lake First Nation, Sask., stars as Sitting Bull alongside Jessica Chastain and Sam Rockwell in the Woman Walks Ahead, based on a true story.

This is the first slate of films to be announced for the fest.

Cinephiles have been wondering whether Quebec director Denis Villeneuve’s much-anticipated Blade Runner sequel will be at the festival but it was not in the lineup announced Tuesday.

Earlier this year, the festival announced it’s cutting two programs and reducing the overall number of titles it will screen for this year’s edition by 20 per cent. Other highlights of the festival: Hany Abu-Assad’s The Mountain ■

Between Us, starring Kate Winslet and Idris Elba as plane-crash survivors.

Andy Serkis’s Breathe, a biographical ■ drama starring Andrew Garfield as a paralyzed polio survivor who becomes an advocate for the disabled.

Downsizing, a satire from director ■ Alexander Payne that stars Damon and will open this year’s Venice Film Festival on Aug. 30.

Scott Cooper’s period drama ■

Hostiles, starring Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Adam Beach and Ben Foster.