Toronto is a truly fortunate when it comes to the film industry. There are times when it seems you can’t turn around in this city without striding onto a film location, or finding out there is a film festival of some for or another being held.

I LOVE IT!

Starting today and running through to the 20th id the Toronto program of the Italian Contemporary Film Festival, and I’m looking forward to having a look at a couple of the films screening over the next week.

Featuring a diverse program, there is bound to be something for everyone in Toronto’s schedule!

Tonight, the festival kicks off with, The Best Offer, the latest film from celebrated director Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso, Malena), a film starring the incomparable Geoffrey Rush, Donald Sutherland, Sylvia Hoeks and Jim Sturgess. This one I’m looking forward to a lot – Rush plays an art dealer who is drawn into a mystery surrounding a reclusive heiress.

Other titles featured this year include – Like the Wind, a film about Italy’s first female prison governor, directed by Marco Simon Puccioni and starring Valeria Golino – this one looks really good.

Another film, that looks like it may mess me up emotionally is called, First Snowfall from Andrea Segre, and that is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Over the course of the next week, the Lightbox, Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, and the Isabel Bader theater will be screening an amazing collection of films, there’s a sci-fi film called 2047: Sights of Death (Alessandro Capone) starring Rutger Hauer, Stephen Baldwin, Danny Glover, Michael Madsen, and Daryl Hannah, there are documentaries like Mona Lisa is Missing (Joe Medeiros) and MAD: A World of Fashion (Anna Di Francisca & Zoltan Horvat) and Operation Remembrance (a trio of documentaries about the Canadian part in the liberation of Italy), there are comedies like Italian Movies (Matteo Pellegrini) and A Girlfriend’s Guide to Murder (Giorgia Farina).

The lineup this year, looks pretty stellar, especially if you are looking to get away from the standard cookie cutter, blockbuster fare that is populating the theaters this summer.

You can check out the entire program here, which will give you the run down on all the films being screened as well as links to buy tickets to them as well.

I get very excited about covering film festivals, because it’s an opportunity to see films that, otherwise, you might not have been introduced to. So, I for one, am looking very forward to seeing what the next week holds…

Will you be there?