'The best film is Breakfast on Pluto by Neil Jordan,' so Bono told over twenty thousands fans at a U2 concert in Toronto. The night before, he had walked the red carpet at the Toronto Film Festival for the world premiere of Jordan's 14th film, an adaptation of Patrick McCabe's Booker nominated novel starring Cillian Murphy in the spectacular role of Patrick 'Kitten' Braden.

It's no secret that Toronto has begun to outshine Cannes, Venice, and Berlin as the most exciting film festival in the world. With a dizzying number of stars in attendance as well as 250 films shown over 10 days (in addition to the amount of movies being shot there), it's not surprising that the city has been renamed the Hollywood of the North.

Toronto audiences were touched by the funny and poignant story of transvestite Patrick 'Kitten' Braden, who goes in search of his/her mother. The role of nutty, naïve, sharp-tongued 'Kitten' calls for an actor of extraordinary talent, and Murphy gives the performance of a lifetime. 'I never thought I'd be making a film about a transvestite who shoots the IRA with perfume,' he said after the screening of this timely film with intriguing political undercurrents. Breakfast on Pluto sees Jordan back on his best form, taking on the subject of Irish terrorism and bringing together a great cast, including Liam Neeson as Kitten's priest father, Stephen Rea as a loopy magician, Brendan Gleeson as a bolshie womble, and Ian Hart as a violent cop.

'Cillian is on the way. He's in the bathroom', explained Neil Jordan to the audience in the after movie discussion. 'Is he in the ladies or the gents?' shouted up a voice from the back. Speaking about the fantastic soundtrack (which includes Van Morrison), Jordan said he would have loved to use John Lennon as well, but the price was too high. Despite this, rock stars Brian Ferry and Gavin Friday both make memorable cameo appearances. Cillian, receiving rapturous applause from his female, and male, fans in the audience told us how much he enjoyed wearing Kitten's flamboyant wardrobe, 'but I didn't get to keep the outfits,' he said. 'I'm still processing the film. I had to go to the bathroom a lot during the shooting to spend some private time.'

Politically-driven documentaries and post-9/11 films seemed to drive the tone of the festival this year. Highlights include the biting documentary Why we Fight, directed by Eugene Jarecki, in which Gore Vidal, among others, speaks out against the imperialist 'United States of Amnesia'. The documentary opens with the question 'What are we fighting for? Why do we leave our sons in a lonely grave far from home?' Taking its title from a series of propaganda films made for the United States government during the Second World War (many directed by Frank Capra), Why we Fight takes its lead from Eisenhower's profound 1961 farewell address in which he states that 'we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.'

Robin Wright Penn wears her politics on her sleeve in Jeff Stanzler's Sorry, Haters. She gives a highly charged performance as a white American who has a double-edged encounter with an immigrant Arab man.

The psychological nightmare for Ashade (Abdellatif Kechiche) starts when Phoebe (Wright Penn) gets into the taxi he's driving. She asks him to stop while she gets out to scrape a rock along the side of a parked minivan. Phoebe has her battles to fight, as does Ashade, who is distraught about his brother who has been denied access to the country to be with his pregnant wife. When Phoebe agrees to help, things become more and more tense in one of the most interesting films at the festival. Is Hollywood realising at last that the Arab community may have a story to tell too?

Alain Tasma's October 17th 1961 is a documentary that deals with the shocking events in Paris on that date, when up to 200 Algerians drowned after being thrown into the Seine by the French police. At the height of the Algerian War of Independence, as French police were being killed in an effort to force the withdrawal, the gendarmes retaliated by beating up Algerians and putting a curfew in place. The Front de Liberation Nationale called for a peaceful demonstration in which 11 thousand Algerians took to the streets of Paris; it was then that the tragedy occurred .

With the power of a thriller, not unlike Paul Greengrass's Omagh, this is a documentary that needed to be made, especially since these events have been left out of French history books for over forty years. Cache (Hidden) directed by Michael Haneke deals with the same contentious period in Frances's past. Georges (Daneil Auteuil) and Anne (Juliet Binoche) live a comfortable bourgeois life in Paris when a number of strange videotapes arrive at their home. As the tapes become more and more personal George begins to believe that he is being punished for something he did to an Algerian boy during the 1960's. If you have just about become used to the alarming terror in the films of Haneke then this film will blow your socks off again. Politics, prejudice, racism and justice are issues that are raised in this stunning new film from the master of paranoia.

Harsh Times, directed by David Ayer, is a disturbed and gutsy film that takes head-on the questions about what happens soldiers when the war is over. A Gulf War veteran (Christian Bale) spends his time smoking pot, joyriding and having delusional macho outbursts. Engaged to a poor Mexican woman, Jim (Bale) wants to join the LAPD and bring her to live in the US. Jim and his unemployed friend (played by Six Feet Under's Freddy Rodriguez) gradually realise that the American Dream is harder than ever to find.

North Country was a predictable disappointment. Another story of a woman's battle to work in a male environment, the film is directed by Niki Caro (Whale Rider). Even the outstanding performances of Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand, as women who desperately believe in their right to work in a coal mine, fail to lift the movie, which ends up having to resort to the soaring power of the human spirit to make its point. The one good reason for looking at North Country is Chris Menges' spectacular cinematography, which manages to see beauty in the most horrible of places.

One of the truly outstanding documentaries of the festival was The Heart of the Game, which was shot over a six-year period. Directed by Ward Serrill, it tells the story of an ageing college professor who gives up his job to become a basketball coach in a Seattle girls' school. It may not sound too enthralling so far, but Bill Resler is like no coach you've ever come across. He gets involved in every aspect of the girls' lives: He makes them do rough and tumble exercises because 'girls really don't like physical contact, and that can really affect their game', as well as developing an intense group dynamic (they imagine themselves as roaring, vicious wolves before a game).

The remarkably unorthodox coaching method is most evident in Resler's insistence that the team remain independent throughout. When there are problems they have a meeting which Resler will not attend since he wants them to become a unit that is totally self supportive. No prizes for guessing how the documentary progresses, but it's a top-class journey.

When Isabella Rossellini describes her father's stomach, round and enormous, and how she used to slide up and down it as a child, it's with a hugely affectionate and humorous tone. She even makes the stomach talk. Guy Madden directed the black and white My Dad is 100 years Old, which was written by Rossellini in what amounts to a fabulous fifteen-minute love letter to her father, director Roberto Rossellini. Playing all of the characters, including Chaplin, Fellini, Hitchcock and, most touchingly, her own mother, Rossellini, along with Maddin, has put together a graceful and witty plea that her father's work should not be forgotten.

Mary Rose Doorly