Stars such as Michelle Pfeiffer, Denzel Washington and Sigourney Weaver are set to turn out at the Toronto Film Festival, which began on Thursday.

Films from more than 50 countries are being screened at the prestigious festival, which ranks alongside Cannes, Venice and Sundance.

Last year's festival was disrupted by the 11 September attacks as many of the visitors to the event watched the tragic events unfold on screen.

This year the festival will be put on hold during the morning of the first anniversary as a mark of respect.

The Toronto Film Festival has become one of the most prestigious industry events and the impressive list of Hollywood stars due to attend gives testament to its credentials.

Antonio Banderas, Juliette Binoche, John Cusack and Ralph Fiennes are also expected to grace the red carpet during the 10-day event.

Sir Michael Caine stars in a new version of The Quiet American

As well as films from the United States, there will be a strong showing of French, Russian and South Korean productions.

Following the events of last year many in the industry expressed their thoughts that the film world would steer clear of making movies about terrorism or 11 September.

Darker

But the festival will see several films about the events, including Sigourney Weaver and Anthony LaPaglia's movie The Guys, which centres on a fire chief's thoughts after losing many of his men in the tragedy.

"There are some films that are more sombre, that are a little darker than you might expect, but I don't think that is necessarily directly linked to last year," said Steve Gravestock, manager of festival programming.

"Obviously we have a couple of films that make reference to what happened last year, the 11/09/01 shorts and The Guys... but there's a lot of pretty optimistic films too."

This year's line-up includes 24 star Kiefer Sutherland making his big screen comeback in Phone Booth, in which he is reunited with The Lost Boys and Flatliners director Joel Schumacher.

Controversial

The world premi�re of Dustin Hoffman's family drama Moonlight Mile, which sees him star with Susan Sarandon and Holly Hunter, will be shown, as will the premi�re of The Quiet American, a new screen version of the Graham Greene novel starring Sir Michael Caine.

Oscar-winner Denzel Washington's first attempt at directing, The Antwone Fisher Story, a true story about a sailor who went on to become a Hollywood screenwriter, is also in the line-up.

The festival will be launched with a gala screening of Atom Egoyan's Ararat, which has already sparked controversy.

The Canadian director's movie, which premi�red at Cannes in May, examines disputed claims of genocide of Armenians between 1915 and 1923 by the Ottoman Turks.