The Toronto fest opens tonight with the world premiere of “The Fifth Estate” starring Benedict Cumberbatch as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Other anticipated films include “Gravity” starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as stranded astronauts; “12 Years a Slave” based on a true story of a free black man sold into slavery in the pre-Civil War South, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Matthew McConaughey plays an AIDS patient tangling with the 1980s medical establishment in “The Dallas Buyers Club” and Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts team for the first time in Tracey Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning “August: Osage County”

“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” stars Idris Elba as the South African icon.