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WikiLeaks drama to open Toronto festival

The Toronto International Film Festival will open with the WikiLeaks drama The Fifth Estate and showcase the much-anticipated adaptation of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County.

"The Fifth Estate" - based on the Wikileaks story - stars Benedict Cumberbatch (left) as Julian Assange, with Carice van Houten, Daniel Bruhl, and Moritz Bleibtreu. The movie will open the Toronto International Film Festival.
"The Fifth Estate" - based on the Wikileaks story - stars Benedict Cumberbatch (left) as Julian Assange, with Carice van Houten, Daniel Bruhl, and Moritz Bleibtreu. The movie will open the Toronto International Film Festival.Read more

NEW YORK - The Toronto International Film Festival will open with the WikiLeaks drama The Fifth Estate and showcase the much-anticipated adaptation of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County.

The festival, which runs Sept. 5-15, has long been a launching pad for Hollywood's fall season and Oscar contenders. This year's lineup, much of which was announced Tuesday, features films starring George Clooney, Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, Colin Firth, and Nicole Kidman.

Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate, with Benedict Cumberbach as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, opens the festival.

John Wells' August: Osage County, with Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, was among the 16 galas announced, as was the 1980s AIDS drama Dallas Buyers Club, directed by Jean-Marc Vallee and starring McConaughey as a man who fights his HIV diagnosis by procuring medications himself.

In The Railway Man, directed by Jonathan Leplitzky, Firth is a British World War II prisoner who years later pursues his captor. Kidman costars.

Other premieres: Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave; Ron Howard's Formula 1 drama Rush; Labor Day, Jason Reitman's adaption of Joyce Maynard's novel, with Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin; and Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner's first feature, You Are Here, with Owen Wilson and Zach Galifianakis.

One notable posthumous release: the romantic comedy Enough Said, featuring the late James Gandolfini.

And while not announced Tuesday, All the Wrong Reasons, with the late Glee actor Cory Monteith, is reportedly heading to Toronto.

Mike Myers will unveil his Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon about the talent manager who repped Alice Cooper, Luther Vandross, and others.

Jason Bateman premieres his spelling-bee comedy Bad Words.

Ralph Fiennes will bring his The Invisible Woman, about Charles Dickens (Fiennes) and his lover (Felicity Jones).

The thriller Gravity, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, stars Clooney and Bullock as stranded astronauts.

The festival closer is Life of Crime, a comic crime story starring Jennifer Aniston and John Hawkes, based on Elmore Leonard's The Switch.