This year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) will have "Creation", a British film about evolution theorist Charles Darwin, as its opening film, organizers announced Tuesday.

"We have traditionally opened with a Canadian film, but this year we chose to go a different route. We fell in love with this movie and this is the one, we felt, really sets the tone for the kinds of conversations we hope will happen around the films at the festival," TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey said in Toronto.

The "tension between faith and reason" seen in Creation, which follows Darwin as he struggles with the views of his deeply religious wife and his world-changing theories, is also emerging as a theme in other films programmers have selected, Bailey and festival director-CEO Piers Handling added.

They also announced 22 films to be presented during the film festival, including three American films and a Norse-Danish-Germanco-production. These are:

"Precious," based on the Novel "Push by Sapphire," which won wide acclaim at Sundance.

"Get Low," starring Robert Duvall as a 1930s backwoods eccentric who stages his own funeral.

"The Invention of Lying," Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson's romantic comedy set in an alternate universe where lying does not exist, except for a down-on-his-luck bloke who suddenly learns how.

"Max Manus," a film based on the true story of Norway's famed WWII resistance fighter.

As well, 18 new and recent titles -- from noted filmmakers like Jane Campion, Steven Soderbergh and Johnnie To and featuring actors such as Clive Owen, Eva Green, Matt Damon, Edward Norton and Kristin Scott Thomas -- were also added to the TIFF 2009 schedule as special presentations.

The 2009 Toronto International Film Festival takes place Sept.10-19.

Source: Xinhua