The lineup for this year's Calgary International Film Festival was unveiled Tuesday and a production based on a best-selling Canadian novel will be featured at the opening gala.

The Sisters Brothers is a comedy-western set in the Gold Rush of 1851 and stars John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix and Jake Gyllenhaal.

It's just one of 178 films that will be screened over the 12 days of the film festival, which runs Sept. 19 to 30 at the Globe Theatre and Cineplex Eau Claire.

The red carpet opening gala goes Sept. 19 at the Jack Singer Concert Hall.

Stephen Schroeder, the festival's executive director, appeared on The Homestretch to talk about this year's highlights.

Q: So let's start with the opening gala, what's this movie about?

A: The Sisters Brothers, many of your listeners will probably know it from the best-selling novel by Canadian novelist Patrick deWitt.

I love this film, I had the pleasure of seeing it at an advanced screening a couple of weeks ago, we're so proud to open with it. I think it's fair to say it's a very anticipated film on the fall calendar … Jacques Audiard, the director, is a Cannes Palme D'Or winner, it's an excellent film, very funny.

Q: There's some big name stars in that film, any chance we may be seeing them walk the red carpet on opening night?

A: We're working on it, the guests are always the last ones to get confirmed and when it comes to the big A-list celebrities, you never know, it's a huge wildcard, but we'll get who we can from the film for sure.

Q: One hundred seventy-eight movies screened over the 12 days of the festival, we obviously can't talk about all of them, but what are some of the other highlights?

A: There's so many great films. I'm a really big fan of The Hummingbird Project, which is the new film by Canadian director Kim Nguyen, I think it's his best film. Jesse Eisenberg stars, people will remember him from the Social Network. He plays a young entrepreneur who's determined to build a straight fibre-optic cable from Kansas to New York to beat the equities market and exchange. It's a really, really wonderful film, quite rich, quite funny, quite tender as well.

We also have a really great documentary called The Woman Who Loves Giraffes, about the Jane Goodall of giraffes, really, who was a Canadian researcher. She's still alive, she's 84 and coming to the festival, Anne Dagg. I know there's a lot of people who love biology and who love animals, and that's going to be a great one.

Q: What else is new this year?

A: A big theme for us over the years, and a big specialty, is music on screen, films that are connected to music in some way. For the past couple of years we've been doing screenings as a pilot project at Studio Bell, home of the National Music Centre, this year we're expanding our screenings there, we're going to do four … and this year after those screenings there's going to be live music thematically related to the films at the King Eddy.

Also, the closing gala this year is quite exciting … the Grant Fuhr story, Making Coco, a very exciting film.

Q: You have a number of world premier screenings as well.

A: We have six world premiers this year, which is high for us. One of them is by Calgary's own Gillian McKercher, who's just directed her first feature called Circle of Steel, sort of a satirical and human look at people working in the oil and gas industry.

Q: How much competition is there for world premiers, because there's so many film festivals. What about negotiating and getting the ones you want?

A: There are thousands of film festivals in the world, there's only a few of them who can really corner the market on world premiers. We do get our fair share as a medium-sized festival, but if a film is going to have the chance to premier at [Toronto International Film Festival] they're never going to turn that down. Of course, Venice is the other big one right before TIFF. For us, we're really not focused on world premiers as a goal, just the same way we're not focused on having celebrities here as a goal. We know from talking to our audience that what people really care about is the films themselves.

Q: I can remember the early days of the Calgary International Film Festival, it was pretty low budget, so how has it grown over the years?

A: Last year we went above 40,000 attendees for the first time in festival history … that's about a doubling of the audience in about the last four or five years. This year we had a record number of paid submissions to the festival, over 1,900. That's a really big indicator.

Q: At the end of the festival, you're going to be giving an award for the fan of the year, the person who sees the most films at the festival, you've got 178 of them on the roster this year, what the most films you've heard of someone seeing over the course of the festival?

A: So last year was the first year we did the fan of the year award, the winner saw, if memory serves, 37 films. I think it's very hard to see more than that ... if you're a physicists, and you do algorithms, you might be able to figure out a way to see 39 or 40. It's probably my personal favourite award because what I love celebrating most at the festival is the fans.

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With files from The Homestretch