Toronto — The three-hour film, The Gospel of John, will have its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, it was announced Thursday.
Directed by Philip Saville, the epic, which takes a contemporary approach to the biblical story, is among the films to be shown at the festival's Special Presentation feature.
Christopher Plummer narrates and Henry Ian Cusick plays Jesus. The film features 75 principal actors from the Canadian and British stage, as well as more than 2,000 extras.
The other films announced Thursday included Love Actually, a romantic comedy that weaves together several love affairs.
Directed by Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and Funeral, Notting Hill) the film stars Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Keira Knightley, Martine McCutcheon and Rowan Atkinson.
Sofia Coppola's second film, Lost in Translation, makes its Canadian premiere at the festival. Bob (Bill Murray) is a movie actor who arrives in Tokyo to shoot a series of whisky ads. The film also features Scarlett Johansson and Giovanni Ribisi.
Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores Perros) returns with 21 Grams, a North American premiere. A grieving mother (Naomi Watts), a terminally ill professor (Sean Penn) and a spiritual ex-convict (Benicio Del Toro), are brought together by a freak accident.
Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes, in black and white, is a feature film instalment in a series of shorts that originally began as a six-minute improvisational film in 1986.
In the full-length film, also a North American premiere, each sequence involves several characters sitting around, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and discussing subjects as diverse as caffeine popsicles and Elvis conspiracy theories.
The cast includes Roberto Benigni, Steve Buscemi and Cate Blanchett.
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