DREAMING OF OBLIVION.

TORONTO (Ont.); ONTARIO; CANADA

BARBARIAN Invasions, The (Film); ON the Corner (Film)

The article focuses on the opening of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and reviews several films. Second only to Cannes--and with a program that often outstrips it--TIFF (Sept. 4-13) is Toronto's world-class wet dream, a cirque du cinema that juggles Hollywood stars with Turkish auteurs. Among the 339 films from 55 countries showing at TIFF's 28th annual edition are 19 new Canadian features. The lineup is richer than usual, beginning with the opening night gala, "The Barbarian Invasions," the Denys Arcand masterpiece that triumphed in Cannes last May. In "Emile," from Vancouver writer-director Carl Bessai, a dithering Sir Ian McKellan stars as an expatriate professor who comes home to be haunted by bloody apparitions of his two brothers, who died violently on the old family farm. "On the Corner" offers a less romantic view of Aboriginal destiny. If I'm going to be stranded with a stupid white man in a white void, give me "The Snow Walker." Sarah Polley's film about dying, "My Life Without Me," is a curious hybrid--set in Vancouver, it's a Canadian-Spanish co-production written and directed by Spain's Isabel Coixet, executive-produced by Pedro Almod-var, and cast with American indie names such as Mark Ruffalo and Deborah Harry.