Marc Forster's StrangerThan Fiction will openthe 42nd Annual Chicago InternationalFilm Festival, which is running from Oct 5-19.

Columbia Pictures and Mandate Pictures' comedy receivesits world premiere as a Special Presentation here tomorrow at Toronto and starsWill Ferrell as a man who hears the voice of an author inside his head anddoesn't realise he is a character in her latest novel whom she plans to killoff. Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman also star.

Internationalhighlights include Christian Volckman's futuristic French animated tale Renaissance about a police officer's hunt for amissing girl, Feliks Falk's Polish recession drama The Collector, and Matthias Glasner's drama TheFree Will, about aconvicted rapist who tries to go straight.

Playing in theCinema Of The Americas strand are Humberto Solas' Cuban social essay BarrioCuba and JulianHernandez' Mexican romance Broken Sky, while Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg's miscarriage ofjustice account The Trials Of Darryl Hunt and Toa Fraser's New Zealand family drama No.2 are among the highlights in the BlackPerspectives programme.

DestinationGreece presents Nikos Grammatikos' reconciliation drama The Wake, and Nikos Nikolaidis' The Zero Years, set in an institutionalised futuristic worldwhere women are sterilised and kept under constant surveillance.

Docufestinclude's James Longley's Iraq In Fragments, and Eric Steel's suicide tale TheBridge, while the AnimeFocus section presents the North American premiere of Yoshiyuki Tomino's trilogy,Mobile Suit Z Gundam I, II and III,followed by a Q&A with the director. Spotlight Chicago/Illinois includesBrian Jun's sibling drama Steel City starring John Heard, Tom Guiry and Laurie Metcalf.

Other screeningsinclude Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's drama Babel starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett,Rolf de Heer's aboriginal drama Ten Canoes, Kim Ki-duk's South Korean drama Time, and Neil Armfield's stirring drug dramaCandy, which starsHeath Ledger and Abbie Cornish.