Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts’ new movie Demolition will open the Toronto International Film Festival.

The drama about grief, from Wild director Jean-Marc Vallee, will receive a gala premiere at Roy Thomson Hall on September 10 at the start of the star-studded festival.

The festival will also see world premieres for Ridley Scott’s space epic The Martian, starring Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain, and Stephen Frears’ Lance Armstrong biopic The Program, starring Ben Foster.

Gay rights drama Stonewall, starring Jeremy Irvine and Jonathan Rhys Meyers will also make its debut at the festival, along with Black Mass, a film about notorious criminal Whitey Bulger, starring Johnny Depp and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal film Spotlight starring Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams and Stanley Tucci, is also in the line-up for the festival, along with The Danish Girl, which stars Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne as transgender artist Lili Elbe.

Eddie Redmayne
Eddie Redmayne is already tipped for more awards recognition for his transgender role in The Danish Girl (Ian West/PA)

The festival will also see a gala premiere for Freeheld, in which Julianne Moore and Ellen Page play domestic partners, drama Forsaken, which stars father and son Donald and Kiefer Sutherland and gangster film Legend, starring Tom Hardy as twin gangsters Ronald and Reggie Kray.

Breaking Bad actor Bryan Cranston will likely walk the red carpet at the premiere of Trumbo, about the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, while Nicolas Hytner will bring The Lady In The Van starring Downton Abbey dowager Dame Maggie Smith to Canada for the 40th year of the film festival.

Piers Handling, chief executive and director of TIFF, said: “We are celebrating our 40th anniversary in 2015 and this first round of films offers a taste of the incredible line-up at this year’s festival.

“Made by both established and emerging film-makers from around the world, these films offer a global snapshot of our times.”

The Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 10 to 20.