Meg Ryan stars in Jane Campion's The Cut

The festival will showcase 64 debut films, including Richard Curtis's Love Actually and Jane Campion's In the Cut.

Meg Ryan, Cate Blanchett, Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman are among the celebrities expected to attend.

Organisers hope the 10-day event will give the economy a boost after the SARS outbreak earlier this year.

Last year's event brought in 67 million Canadian dollars (about �39m).

Canadian film-maker Denys Arcand opened the festival with his feature, The Barbarian Invasions, a sequel to his 1986 film, The Decline of the American Empire.

Star guests

The film has already won the award for best screenplay at Cannes, where it also picked up the best actress prize for Marie-Josee Croze's role as a drug addict who helps a dying man cope with his pain.

Increasingly, Toronto is seen as the festival where the studios preview the films they think will win awards. Tom Brook on the line-up

Arcand's opener will be joined by 85 US films, more than 100 European entries and 55 films from Asia.

The festival now rivals Cannes in its influence and is the place where many North American distribution deals take off.

Contingency plans will be in place in case the city's electricity is interrupted during the festival.

Ontario was plunged into darkness last month along with several other North American cities when several power grids went down.

French festival

Across the Atlantic, the 29th Deauville Festival of American Cinema opens on Friday in France.

Seabiscuit could be an Oscar contender

The Normandy event is widely known as the place to launch US productions in Europe and will run until 14 September.

Alongside established successes such as Seabiscuit, the festival will also feature a selection of independent US films and a new section for documentaries.

Roman Polanski will head up a jury that includes Nastassja Kinski and Ben Kingsley.

John Cusack, Tobey Maguire, Holly Hunter and Ridley Scott are among those due to attend.

Deauville's only world premi�re this year is Greg Marcks's 11:14, staring Hilary Swank, Rachael Leigh Cook and Barbara Hershey.

Other films in competition include Robert Duvall's Assassination Tango, American Splendor, directed by Shari Springer Berman and Rober Pulcini and Catherine Hardwicke's Thirteen.

Harrison Ford is due to attend a screening of his film, Hollywood Homicide, on Friday and Jessica Lange is set to receive a tribute ahead of the screening of Normal, directed by Jane Anderson.

A remake of The Italian Job, starring Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron, will also receive its European premi�re at the festival.