The big-name line-up will "electrify this city" said organisers

Organisers said the stellar line-up was "a relief" after the city's problems with the Sars crisis and North American powercut.

Toronto hosts one of the year's most major film festivals, and this year's event - to begin on 4 September - will include 64 world premi�res.

It will coincide with the Deauville festival in France, which has just announced that Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski will chair its jury.

And actor Harrison Ford will be the main attraction on the town's red carpet to promote his new film Hollywood Homicide, organisers have said.

But Toronto is seen as the more important event with greater pulling power, and Anthony Hopkins, Francis Ford Coppola, Cate Blanchett and Meg Ryan are also expected to travel to the Canadian city.

Roman Polanski was named best director at this year's Oscars

"The fact they're here is obviously for us a great sigh of relief... their presence at the festival is going to electrify this city," festival director Piers Handling said.

"I think it's just a recognition of how important the festival has become in the eyes of the international industry."

Among the films to be showcased there will be Girl With a Pearl Earring, based on Tracy Chevalier's novel and starring Colin Firth as 17th Century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer.

Also on show will be Richard Linklater's The School of Rock, starring Jack Black as a hard-up rock star who hopes to get back to the top.

And director Ridley Scott will introduce a director's cut of his classic Alien, including previously unseen footage.

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 336 films 64 world premi�res 55 countries represented 28,340 minutes of film 545 mins - longest film, West of the Tracks

It had already been announced that Love Actually, the directorial debut of Notting Hill writer Richard Curtis, will get its world premi�re at the event.

The festival will close with Danny Deckchair, an Australian film about a man who lifts off in a deckchair tied to helium balloons.

The 10-day event was worth almost $50m (�30m) to the local economy last year.

Mr Handling said the festival had come through some "pretty major crises" in its recent history.