12 Years a Slave
Chiwetel Ejiofor, the British actor best known for such films as Love Actually, Children of Men, and American Gangster, gives a tour de force performance as a 19th century free black man named Solomon Northrup who is kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. Adding some nasty intensity is Michael Fassbender who plays a cruel plantation owner while Brad Pitt turns up in a supporting role as an abolitionist who befriends Northrup.
The Dallas Buyers Club
Matthew McConaughey plays a heterosexual man named Ron Woodroof who, at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the '80s, learns he is HIV positive and takes action to help himself and other stricken patients by smuggling alternative drugs into the U.S. from Mexico. Having lost nearly 40 pounds for the role, the 43-year-old actor is already garnernig talk of an Oscar nomination.
The Railway Man
Colin Firth suits up as a British officer who's sent to a Japanese POW camp in Singapore during World War II where he's tortured and forced to work on the Thai-Burma Railway. Years later, his wife Patti (Nicole Kidman) urges him to confront his captor in order to put the nightmares and hate behind him. Can you say drama?
Blood Ties
This crime thriller pits Clive Owen and Billy Crudup against each other as brothers on the opposite side of the law. Adding plenty of sexiness to the proceedings as the siblings' love interests are Marion Cotillard, Zoe Saldana and Mila Kunis. Sounds hot to us!
Third Person
Liam Neeson headlines this drama of interweaving stories from Crash writer-director Paul Haggis set in Paris, Rome and New York. The Irish actor stars as a writer who flees to the City of Lights to ponder life after his latest book has been rejected and meets Olivia Wilde. Adrien Brody wanders the Italian capital where he meets a Romanian woman while James Franco turns up in the Big Apple raising a son from a previous marriage with his new girlfriend. As always in a Haggis film, the tales are connected in surprising ways.
Enemy
Based on the Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramago's 2002 novel, The Double, Enemy finds Jake Gyllenhaal playing Adam Bell, a ruffled history professor who runs across his double, an actor named Anthony Clair, and decides to track him down. What follows when the two meet each other will have you doing a double take.
The Armstrong Lie
From hero to zero, Alex Gibney's latest documentary explores the downfall of disgraced cycling legend Lance Armstrong and the deception he promulgated to cover up years of doping that eventually saw him stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.
Under the Skin
Scarlett Johansson as a sexy alien seductress? Count us smitten, if a little creeped out by this close encounter. This sci-fi thriller from Sexy Beast director Jonathan Glazer follows the actress' E.T. alter-ego stalking unsuspecting male victims on the lonely back roads of Scotland. Talk about giving a whole new meaning to fatal attraction!
Labor Day
This Jason Reitman-helmed drama centers on a 13-year-old boy who's struggling to care for his depressed single mom, played by Kate Winslet. When the two meet a mysterious, fearsome man (Josh Brolin) who's badly bleeding, against their better judgment they give him a ride only to embark on a journey that will change their lives forever—since, naturally, he's an escaped convict.
August: Osage County
This ensemble drama based on Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play features an all-star cast led by Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts about an Oklahoma family that comes together following the death of the family patriarch (Sam Shepard). No doubt fireworks—and Oscar nominations—will ensue.
The Devil's Knot
Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan directs this drama based on the true story of the 1993 West Memphis murders. Only instead of focusing on the three teenagers who were wrongly convicted, Devil's Knot chronicles the grieving mother of one of the murdered boys, played by Reese Witherspoon, as she becomes increasingly bothered by the lynch-mob mentality of her fellow citizens.
The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her
A romantic drama that attempts to tell both lovers' different perspectives, James McAvoy stars as a restaurant owner named Conor who's married to Jessica Chastain's Eleanor only to see their once-happy marriage implode following a tragedy. Festival organizers are touting the two-fer as an "unprecedented cinematic event" and screening it in reverse order, Her and Him, which filmmaker Ned Benson has intended by design.
Here's a look back at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival Buzz Films