The increasingly tangled web of the fall festival season has begun to come into focus, with the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival releasing its initial program announcement of galas and special presentations. Some of the season’s most anticipated titles are among the galas, including the high-profile remake of “A Star Is Born,” starring Lady Gaga alongside the film’s director, Bradley Cooper, and Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to “La La Land,” the astronaut drama “First Man” starring Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong. Though both of those films are confirmed to bow at the Venice Film Festival shortly before Toronto, the Canadian festival will include several high-profile world premieres, including Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight” follow-up “If Beale Street Could Talk,” adapted from the work of James Baldwin. In the galas section, world premieres include Felix Van Groeningen’s addiction drama “Beautiful Boy,” starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet; Steve McQueen’s heist thriller “Widows,” starring Viola Davis, Liam Neeson and Michelle Rodriguez; Claire Denis’ science-fiction tale “High Life,” starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche; “This Is Us” creator Dan Fogelman’s ensemble drama “Life Itself,” starring Oscar Isaac and Olivia Wilde; and George Tillman Jr.’s topical young adult novel adaptation “The Hate U Give,” starring Amandla Stenberg, Regina Hall and Russell Hornsby. Advertisement Among the notable titles in the special-presentations section will be Alfonso Cuarón’s autobiographically inspired “Roma”; Yann Demange’s crime story “White Boy Rick,” starring Matthew McConaughey; Jacques Audiard’s historical western “The Sisters Brothers,” starring John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix; Jason Reitman’s political drama “The Front Runner,” starring Hugh Jackman as Gary Hart; David Lowery’s crime comedy “Old Man & the Gun,” starring Robert Redford and Sissy Spacek; and the world premiere of Peter Hedges’ “Ben is Back,” starring Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges. Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong in Damien Chazelle’s “First Man,” which will have its Canadian premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. (Universal) This year’s TIFF will be the first during the current era of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements. Like other recent festivals, Toronto’s organizers will make more prominent their longstanding code of conduct for attendees, as well as feature a hotline for anyone wanting to report incidents of harassment or abuse. Cameron Bailey, artistic director and co-head of TIFF, noted that the significance of the current cultural moment is reflected in the festival’s program. “I think one of the most important things we can do is just really highlight and foreground the films by women that we’ll have in the lineup,” Bailey said, noting there are five films directed by women in the galas section alone. “So there’s great work by women to see,” he said, “and if we can really all work, and that includes journalists and others, if we can all work to foreground those films and get people talking, I think that’s what we’re really hoping to accomplish.” Aside from the Denis film, other galas at this year’s festival from female filmmakers are Nicole Holofcener’s world premiere adaptation of the novel “The Land of Steady Habits,” starring Ben Mendelsohn; Sara Colangelo’s “The Kindergarten Teacher,” starring Maggie Gyllenhaal; Melanie Laurent’s “Galveston,” starring Elle Fanning and Ben Foster; and Elizabeth Chomko’s “What They Had,” starring Hilary Swank and Michael Shannon. Works from female filmmakers showing in the festival’s special-presentations section include Marielle Heller’s “Can You Ever Forgive Me,” Nadine Labaki’s Cannes prize-winner “Capernaum,” Eva Husson’s “Girls of the Sun,” Patricia Rozema’s “Mouthpiece,” and the world premieres of Amma Asante’s “Where Hands Touch,” Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Maya” and Stella Meghie’s “The Weekend.” Advertisement The ecosystem of fall film festivals, including events in Telluride, Venice, New York and Los Angeles, has become increasingly complex over the last few years. Regardless of whether films have their world premiere in Toronto, the festival is still seen as a vital launching pad both for a movie’s commercial prospects as well as awards-season aspirations. Recent Oscar best picture winners “The Shape of Water,” “Moonlight” and “Spotlight” have all had important early screenings at TIFF. “We’re symbiotic,” Bailey said of TIFF’s relationship to other festivals. “There’s the coincidence of the calendar and then there’s just trying to always remember why we’re doing this — we’re doing it out of a love of cinema. Any kind of competitive aspect to it, chasing a movie you want to get before anybody else does, that’s always got to take a back seat to trying to present the films you feel most strongly about to your audience. … There’s a number of things going on at once.” Liam Neeson and Viola Davis in Steve McQueen’s “Widows,” which will world premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. (Courtesy Twentieth Century Fox) Streaming services will continue to make their presence felt at TIFF as well. The Cannes Film Festival earlier this year was marked by a controversial decision to ban Netflix releases from its prestigious main competition section, due in part to the specifics of French regulations over film distribution and exhibitions. Advertisement TIFF’s relationship to the streaming platform has been less adversarial, with “Roma,” “The Land of Steady Habits” and “The Kindergarten Teacher” all coming from Netflix. “Beautiful Boy” and “Life Itself” will be released by Amazon, which still favors traditional theatrical runs ahead of streaming debuts. “Like Netflix, like Amazon, like the other streaming services, we’re looking for the best films we can,” Bailey said. “We’re trying to really present the best work by what we consider the strongest filmmakers. And everybody is chasing those great artists.” Though Toronto’s reputation and prestige are based largely on its ability to launch new titles into awards season, the lineup released Tuesday is peppered with many films that premiered at festivals earlier in the year, including Paul Dano’s “Wildlife,” Wash Westmoreland’s “Colette” and Reinaldo Marcus Green’s “Monsters and Men” from Sundance, and Lee Chang-dong’s “Burning,” Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War,” Asghar Farhadi’s “Everybody Knows” and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Shoplifters” from Cannes. Additional titles, including films in the festival’s platform, documentary and midnight madness sections, will be announced in the weeks leading up to this year’s edition, which runs Sept. 6-16. Advertisement<doc-sep>Viola Davis, Timothée Chalamet, Lady Gaga Photo : Ben Gabbe / Stringer, Tim Mosenfelder / Contributor, Gotham / Contributor ( Getty Images ) Usually , you’re lucky if you look at a film festival lineup and see a handful of interesting movies in the mix. But this year’s Toronto International Film Fest is no ordinary beast. Advertisement Variety reports that TIFF has released its first wave of films that will screen at the festival, which takes place from September 6–16. What’s more, of the 17 films included in this announcement, five are directed by women, and six by directors of color. Cameron Bailey, the festival’s artistic director, told Variety that he anticipates that when the roster of films is finalized, roughly one-third will come from female directors. That’s a welcome piece of news, but holy shit, so is this lineup, including likely Oscar contenders, a Palme d’Or winner, and at least one hotly anticipated film that might be good, or might be a horror show . Here are some of the most noteworthy titles making an appearance at Toronto this year: Widows, Steve McQueen’s Viola Davis-starring crime drama, and his follow-up to 12 Years a Slave. Damien Chazelle’s Neil Armstrong movie, First Man, which stars Ryan Gosling (quick, someone find out how Armstrong felt about jazz). Shoplifters, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Palme d’Or winner. The Keira Knightley-starring Colette, a Colette biopic in which she plays Colette. Claire Denis’ High Life, the director’s E nglish-language debut. Roma, Alfonso Cuaron’s first film since winning the Oscar for Gravity; it is apparently semi-autobiographical, and thus unlikely to be set in space. (B ut who knows? ) An adaptation of Angie Thomas’s best-selling YA novel, The Hate U Give, starring Amandla Stenberg, Regina Hall, Issa Rae, Common, and K.J. Apa (a.k.a. Hot Archie). Beautiful Boy, which stars Steve Carrell, Timothée Chalamet, and ( insert peach-related joke here). B ut yeah, this movie looks great. Oh, and Bradley Cooper’s Lady Gaga-starring A Star Is Born, which is, by the way, the might-be-good, might-be-yikes situation. That is a lineup. For the full roster, head over to Variety; for full coverage, wait patiently until September, and then watch this space.<doc-sep>Several of the films will have had previous festival exposure, among them Mr. Cooper’s remake of “A Star Is Born,” in which he stars alongside Lady Gaga and which is scheduled to debut at the Venice Film Festival. Elizabeth Chomko’s “What They Had” (with Michael Shannon and Taissa Farmiga) and Sara Colangelo’s “The Kindergarten Teacher” (starring Maggie Gyllenhaal) both had their premieres earlier this year at Sundance. Yet perhaps more than with any other festival, favorable response in Toronto is considered one of the more reliable bellwethers of a film’s Oscars prospects. Previous audience award winners there include “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” “La La Land” and “The Imitation Game,” which all went on to be strong Oscar contenders. Of particular interest will be the new films from Mr. McQueen and Mr. Cuarón. Neither director has unveiled a feature since 2013, and, in 2014, Mr. McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” and Mr. Cuarón’s “Gravity” went head to head in the Oscars race. (“12 Years a Slave” won best picture, while Mr. Cuarón nabbed best director.) This year, Mr. McQueen brings his ensemble thriller, “Widows,” starring Viola Davis and Michelle Rodriguez, to Toronto, while Mr. Cuarón will bring “Roma,” a Mexican family drama that will also appear at the New York Film Festival. Mr. Chazelle’s “First Man,” which reunites him with his “La La Land” star Ryan Gosling, who plays Neil Armstrong, is also sure to count among the season’s must-sees. Other films of note include “Beautiful Boy,” starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet and based on the father and son memoirs of David and Nic Sheff about the younger man’s addictions; “The Hate U Give,” another Amandla Stenberg film, this one based on the best-selling young adult novel of the same title about a deadly police shooting; and “Life Itself,” the multigenerational family tale from Dan Fogelman, creator of “This Is Us.”<doc-sep>Awards season will start to take shape in Toronto, with a number of exciting premieres and previous debuts making a play for early recognition. The Toronto International Film Festival has announced its first official slate, with titles in its Gala and Special Presentations program, including some of the most anticipated movies of the year. The 2018 edition will premiere much-anticipated titles like the world premiere of Steve McQueen’s female-driven heist film “Widows,” the world premiere of the Timothée Chalamet-starring drama “Beautiful Boy,” the world premiere of Claire Denis’ much-hyped English-language debut “High Life,” and the world premiere of Barry Jenkins’ “If Beale Street Could Talk,” and several awards season prospects anticipated across the festival circuit. The slate also boasts a number of films already locked down for other festival premieres during the jam-packed fall season, including Venice premieres like Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land” followup “First Man,” which will open the Venice Film Festival, and Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut “A Star Is Born,” along with Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma,” which has already locked up a centerpiece screening at NYFF. This first look at the slate also features buzzy titles like Jason Reitman’s “The Front Runner,” Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Maya,” and David Lowery’s “The Old Man & the Gun.” The lineup includes a number of titles that previously debuted at other festivals, including a slew of Sundance titles (“What They Had,” “Monsters and Men,” and “Wildlife”) and a number of picks from Cannes (“Burning,” “Everybody Knows,” “Dogman,” “Girls of the Sun,” “Capernaum,” “Cold War,” and the Palme d’or winner “Shoplifters”). Additionally, there are a handful of directors set to debut followups to standout films, including Nicole Holofcener’s “The Land of Steady Habits,” (her first film since “Enough Said”), Olivier Assayas’ “Non-Fiction” (his first film since “Personal Shopper”), Amma Asante “Where Hands Touch” (following “A United Kingdom”), Marielle Heller’s “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” (her first film since “Diary of a Teenage Girl”), and László Nemes’ “Sunset” (his first film since his Oscar-winning “Son of Saul”). Below are the first additions to the TIFF 2018 lineup, including both Galas and Special Presentations. Stay tuned for more programming announcements in the days to come. The Toronto International Film Festival runs September 6 – 16 in Toronto, Canada. GALAS 2018 “Beautiful Boy,” ​Felix van Groeningen, USA, World Premiere “Everybody Knows​,” Asghar Farhadi, Spain/France/Italy, North American Premiere “First Man,” ​Damien Chazelle, USA, Canadian Premiere “Galveston,” Mélanie Laurent, USA, Canadian Premiere “The Hate U Give,” G​eorge Tillman, Jr., USA, World Premiere “Hidden Man​,” Jiang Wen, China, International Premiere “High Life​,” Claire Denis, Germany/France/Poland/United Kingdom, World Premiere “Husband Material​,” Anurag Kashyap, India, World Premiere “The Kindergarten Teacher,” ​Sara Colangelo, USA, Canadian Premiere “The Land of Steady Habits,” ​Nicole Holofcener, USA, World Premiere “Life Itself,” Dan Fogelman, USA, World Premiere “The Public,” ​Emilio Estevez, USA, World Premiere “Red Joan,” ​Sir​ ​Trevor Nunn, United Kingdom, World Premiere Warner Bros. “A Star is Born,” ​Bradley Cooper, USA, North American Premiere “Shadow,” Z​hang Yimou, China, North American Premiere “What They Had,” Elizabeth Chomko, USA, International Premiere “Widows,” ​Steve M​cQ​ueen, United Kingdom/USA, World Premiere SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS 2018 “Ben is Back,” ​Peter Hedges, USA, World Premiere “Burning,” L​ee Chang-dong, South Korea, North American Premiere “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” Marielle Heller, USA, International Premiere “Capernaum​,” Nadine Labaki, Lebanon, North American Premiere “Cold War,” P​aweł Pawlikowski, Poland/UnitedKingdom/France, Canadian Premiere “Colette,” W​ash Westmoreland, United Kingdom, Canadian Premiere “Dogman,” Matteo Garrone, Italy/France, Canadian Premiere “The Front Runner,” ​Jason Reitman, USA, International Premiere “Giant Little Ones,” K​eith Behrman, Canada, World Premiere Cohen Media Group “Girls of the Sun” (Les filles du soleil), ​Eva Husson, France, International Premiere “Hotel Mumbai,” ​Anthony Maras, Australia, World Premiere “The Hummingbird Project,”​ Kim Nguyen, Canada, World Premiere “If Beale Street Could Talk,” Barry Jenkins, USA, World Premiere “Maya,” Mia Hansen-Løve, France, World Premiere “Manto,” ​Nandita Das, India, North American Premiere “Monsters and Men,” R​einaldo Marcus Green, USA, Canadian Premiere “Mouthpiece,” Patricia Rozema, Canada, World Premiere Special Presentations Opening Night “Non-Fiction​,” Olivier Assayas, France, Canadian Premiere Fox Searchlight “The Old Man & the Gun,” David Lowery, USA, International Premiere “Papi Chulo,” J​ohn Butler, Ireland, World Premiere “Roma​,” Alfonso Cuarón, Mexico/USA, Canadian Premiere “Shoplifters​,” Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, Canadian Premiere Special Presentations Closing Night “The Sisters Brothers,” ​Jacques Audiard, USA/France/Romania/Spain, North American Premiere “Sunset,” László Nemes, Hungary/France, North American Premiere “Through Black Spruce,” D​on McKellar, Canada, World Premiere “The Wedding Guest,” Michael Winterbottom, United Kingdom, World Premiere “The Weekend​,” Stella Meghie, USA, World Premiere Tantrum Films/Pinewood Pictures “Where Hands Touch,” A​mma Asante, United Kingdom, World Premiere “White Boy Rick,” ​Yann Demange, USA, International Premiere “Wildlife​,” Paul Dano, USA, Canadian Premiere Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! 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“A Star is Born,” “First Man,” and “Widows” are among the awards-season hopefuls that will screen at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, running Sept. 6-16. Other notable films scheduled for the prestigious gathering include “Beautiful Boy,” a drug addiction drama with Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet; “The Front Runner,” with Hugh Jackman as Sen. Gary Hart; and “The Old Man & the Gun,” a heist thriller that will mark Robert Redford’s retirement from acting. The films announced on Tuesday are not the final list, as Toronto programmers intend to keep adding to the current crop of invitees. Programmers screened roughly 7,000 films before deciding which films to showcase. The Canadian celebration of cinema is seen as an important stop for movies hoping to be in the Oscar conversation. In the past, films such as “Gravity,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Spotlight,” and “The Shape of Water” have all generated momentum that propelled them to success at the Academy Awards after showing in Toronto. It can also be a buzz killer. Last year, for instance, Darren Aronofsky’s “Mother!” and George Clooney’s “Suburbicon” both secured festival berths only to earn indifferent critical notices en route to commercial disaster. “I don’t think you’ll find a stronger lineup at any of the fall festivals,” Cameron Bailey, the festival’s artistic director, told Variety. “The combination of the media attention, the industry attention, and the enthusiasm of the general public makes us unique.” That said, the festival landscape has become ever more crowded, with Telluride and Venice emerging as favored destinations for the auteur set. Many of the movies that will screen at Toronto will likely have screened at those earlier festivals by the time they land in Toronto. “First Man,” Damien Chazelle’s drama about Neil Armstrong’s (Ryan Gosling) moon landing, will open Venice, and “A Star Is Born,” a love story with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper that also marks Cooper’s directorial debut, is having its world premiere on the Lido. A number of directors are returning to Toronto after having achieved success at the festival. “Widows,” a sprawling crime drama with Viola Davis, Robert Duvall, and Michelle Rodriguez, marks Steve McQueen’s follow-up to “12 Years a Slave,” which took the festival by storm when it debuted in 2013. Alfonso Cuaron, who electrified Toronto crowds with “Gravity” that same year, also returns with “Roma,” an intimate family drama that is being distributed by Netflix. And several films that have screened at earlier festivals will try to use Toronto to remind tastemakers about their craftsmanship. These include “Colette,” a historical drama about the famous French novelist that debuted at Sundance and generated Oscar buzz for Keira Knightley, and ￼”Shoplifters,”​ a tender Japanese drama that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. “Widows” will be perhaps the highest-profile film to have its world debut at Toronto. Other films that have decided to have their initial bows at the festival include Claire Denis’ science fiction drama “High Life” and Emilio Estevez’s political drama “The Public.” The line-up has yet to be finalized, but Bailey said he expects roughly a third will be from female directors. Five of the 17 films announced on Tuesday are directed by women and a half dozen are by directors of color. Bailey said that many of the films speak to the current political and social moment. “The Hate U Give” tackles the Black Lives Matter movement; “Beautiful Boy” and “Ben Is Back” dramatize addiction; and “The Frontrunner” grapples with a scandal from the 1980s that helped kick off the tabloidization of politics. Much has changed in the 12 months since the last edition of Toronto. Harvey Weinstein, a fixture at past Toronto’s, has seen his career implode after dozens of women accused him of sexual harassment and assault. His downfall triggered a reckoning in Hollywood, one that tarnished the legacies of other major entertainment figures such as Dustin Hoffman, Matt Lauer, Kevin Spacey, and Louis C.K., who were themselves accused. It was a very different picture last year when C.K. was feted as the director of “I Love You, Daddy.” That film sold to The Orchard out of the festival for $5 million. The studio scrapped its release after allegations broke that C.K. was accused of sexual misconduct by five women. There’s another tie to the Weinstein collapse. “Hotel Mumbai,” a terrorist drama with Dev Patel, has been ensnared in the sale and financial ruin of the Weinstein Company. It will debut at this year’s Toronto, presumably with another distributor overseeing its release.