Sturla Gunnarrson's epic Beowulf& Grendel starring Gerard Butlerand Sarah Polley and Thom Fitzgerald's Three Needles starring Chloe Sevigny, Lucy Liu, Stockard Channingand Sandra Oh will have their world premieres as Special Presentations at the30th Toronto International Film Festival.

Also world premiering is LieWith Me, the much-anticipatedsexually explicit feature from Clement Virgo; it screens in the Visionsprogramme.

The second annual CanadaFirst! competition of emerging local filmmakers will open with LouiseArchambault's Familia.

TIFF announced the Canadianfilms at a press conference in Toronto on Tuesday.

In all Canada First!includes seven world premieres: Dylan Akio Smith's The Cabin Movie, Julia Kwan's Eve & The Firehorse, David Ray's Fetching Cody, Robin Aubert's Saint-Martyr-Des-Damnes, Aubrey Nealon's A Simple Curve, David Christensen's Six Figures, and John Hazlett's These Girls. The other titles in the programme are MichaelMabbott's The Life And Hard Times Of Guy Terrifico and Denis Cote's Les Etats Nordiques.

Three Canadian worldpremieres will screen in the Contemporary World Cinema programme: SeanGarrity's Lucid, Ann MarieFleming's The French Guy andAmnon Buchbinder's Whole New Thing.There are also three titles in the programme which have thus far screened onlyin Quebec: Jean-Marc Vallee's smash C.R.A.Z.Y., Ricardo Trogi's Horloge Biologique (Biological Clock) and Bernard Emond's La Neuvaine.

Four Canadian documentaryfeatures are also having their world premieres: Allan King's Memory For Max,Claire, Ida And Company, whichscreens in Masters; Metal: A Headbanger's Journey from Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen and Jessica Joy-Wise,which screens in Midnight Madness; and Robin Neinstein's Souvenir Of Canada and Astra Taylor's Zizek, both which screen in Real To Reel.

Canadian director andscreenwriter Don Owen is the featured filmmaker in this year's CanadianRetrospective. The programme is accompanied by a monograph written by TIFFprogrammer Steve Gravestock, "Don Owen: Notes on a Filmmaker and His Culture".