Eric Lavallée

Currently in that star child actress moving onto more adult roles phase of her career, Abigail Breslin is moving closer to the direction of acting peers such as the Fannings by taking on some tougher, less flattering indie drama roles. After signing up for Hilary Brougher's Innocence, the actress will now topline The Class Project, playing one of two teen sisters turned murders.

Due to time constraints and reader importance, it's the section I regrettably avoid during the film festival, but that'll likely not be the case in 2011 as Wavelengths 4 features the latest work from our very own Blake Williams. His Coorow-Latham Road falls under the programme heading of "expanding spatial possibility through a consideration of inner and outer spaces, of varying cartographies and aesthetic patterns." Among the heavyweights in Andréa Picard's Wavelengths, we have Apichatpong Joe's latest and it might feel like 2010 again, but James Benning and Thom Anderson are returning to the programme (note: Anderson is one of the smokers in Benning's Twenty Cigarettes).

With a total of 50+1 films from around the world, the Contemporary World Cinema programme could very well be a film festival in its own right. Once again loaded in Cannes North American premieres from, the section also includes world preem titles: Xiaolu Guo's UFO in her Eyes, Lynn Shelton's Your Sister's Sister (starring Emily Blunt see pic above), Nacho Vigalondo's Extraterrestrial and Christophe Van Rompaey's Lena. Among Cannes titles we can vouch for, which will play out in the section and happen to tell us that this world is not healthy state of affairs we have Andrey Zvyagintsev's brilliant Elena, Gerardo Naranjo's Miss Bala , and Markus Schleinzer' Michael.

We here at IONCINEMA.com like to think of the offerings in TIFF's Visions programme as the lieu where we find solace in cinema. Curators have grabbed envelope pushing items from Berlin in Dreileben (Three Lives) Christian Petzold, Dominik Graf and Christoph Hochhäusler, items we caught in Cannes from auteurs Bertrand Bonello, Alejandro Landes, Ruben Östlund and Vimukthi Jayasundara, Locarno's The Loneliest Planet (Loktev) and Venice items such as one of our most anticipated must see films of the year in Alps (see first look above) and Venice's Orizzonti section selected Swirl (Helvecio Marins Jr. and Clarissa Campolina), Kotoko (Shinya Tsukamoto) and Amir Naderi's Cut.

It's official. The cruelest bunch on the film festival circuit are the programmers from TIFF. Once again they make choosing what films to cover during a film festival a painstaking process. A sizeable chunk of films among the just announced Gala and Special Presentations reflect ongoing trends, heavy on world premieres of Brit offerings, red carpet bling items that will be receiving a theatrical release with weeks of the T.O premiere, and a satisfying mix of Cannes items that are definitely worth re-watching and Venice items that have been circled as must see coverage items for the IONCINEMA.com team.