A film about the unlikely friendship that blossomed between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness and Jim Sheridan's adaptation of Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture are two of the features hoping to pick up Oscar buzz at this year's Toronto Film Festival.
The eleven-day festival, which is in its 41st year, has showcased a string of films in recent years that have gone on to achieve glory at the Oscars, including The King's Speech and 12 Years A Slave.
The Journey, starring Timothy Spall as Paisley and Colm Meaney as McGuinness, had its World Premiere earlier this week and is among almost 300 feature-length films which will be be shown at this year's festival from today.
The festival opens later today with the world premiere of The Magnificent Seven, the remake of the 1960 classic Western, starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt.
One of the most high-profile films to premiere at this year's festival is Oliver Stone's Snowden, the biopic of NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, while another film making its debut at Toronto is Deepwater Horizon, which tells the story of the BP oil rig disaster in 2010 that created the worst oil spill in US history.
Several new Irish movies are to receive their world premieres in the Canadian capital including supernatural thriller Without Name and Forever Pure, a documentary about Israeli football club Beitar Jerusalem which became the target of racism after it signed two Muslim players in 2013.
Also screening will be animated Irish short Second to None, which won Best Animated Short and Best Animation at the Galway Film Fleadh.
They join features Maudie, the new film from Song for a Raggy Boy director Aisling Walsh, the documentary Unless and Jim Sheridan's much-anticipated adaptation of the Sebastian Barry bestseller The Secret Scripture which stars Rooney Mara, Vanessa Redgrave, Jack Reynor and Aidan Turner.
It tells the story of Roseanne McNulty (Redgrave and Mara), who recounts her life and her experiences in a psychiatric institution.
Other Irish interest at Toronto will focus on Trespass Against Us, which stars Michael Fassbender, Brendan Gleeson and Killian Scott about three generations of outlaws living on the outskirts of society, while Liam Neeson's latest film, A Monster Calls, will also be screened at the festival.
