With the Toronto International Film Festival set to open tomorrow, expect the wheeling and dealing to get hot and heavy. Officially, the festival doesn't have a market component, but unofficially, agents, distributors, lawyers, managers, producers, publicists and sales agents are jetting in from all over the world in search of the Next Great Thing. Or, at least several Good Things. Among the early deals comes the announcement that the Little Film Company has acquired international sales rights to Avi Nesher's The Secrets. Ronna Wallace of Eastgate Pictures retains US and Canadian sales rights.

I mentioned The Secrets a while back when writing about what was playing in Jerusalem. The description I found at the time was: "Two women discover their own voices in a repressive orthodox culture." The two women are played by newcomers Ania Bukstein and Michal Shtamler, and the 'repressive culture' is a women's religious seminary in Safed, Israel, the birthplace of Kabala. For their performances, both women have been nominated for awards by the Israeli Film Academy, Bukstein as Best Actress and Shtamler as Best Supporting Actress. Fanny Ardant also stars as "a mysterious woman exiled there for committing a crime of passion."

Director Avi Nesher recently won an Achievement Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival. He's been making films since 1979. After scoring initial success in Israel, Nesher toiled for about a decade in Hollywood, where he directed genre fare like Doppelganger with Drew Barrymore. He has since returned to Israel; his previous film, Turn Left at the Edge of the World, was an excellent immigrant drama that also focused on the relationship of two young women. The Secrets will have its international premiere at the Toronto festival.

If I said to you "Want to go to Jerusalem?" your first reaction probably wouldn't be: "What movies are playing there?" but that's the way my diseased mind works. So I did a little surfing and found the site for the Jerusalem Cinematheque. They show up to five different films every day, and the programs are fascinating. For example, on Monday, August 20, they're screening Because I Said So (Diane Keaton today), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Diane Keaton in the '70s), Odette Toulemonde (a recent comedy from France/Belgium) and Le Process de Jeanne D'Arc (Robert Bresson's 1962 version). Next Friday they're showing the latest Pirates of the Caribbean, two by David Fincher (Zodiac and Se7en) and the 1938 Pygmalion. Other titles this month include lesser-seen films by Samuel Fuller, Peter Bogdanovich and Clint Eastwood, plus a good selection from France and India.

As far as mainstream movies go, you can rest assured that Israelis are also subjected to the likes of Rush Hour 3, Bratz: The Movie and No Reservations. (They're even showing Evan Almighty.) But there are also Israeli titles like The Secrets ("two women discover their own voices in a repressive orthodox culture"), Beaufort (tense months for young soldiers just before Israel pulled out of Lebanon), Noodle (Mili Avatal (pictured) as a widowed flight attendant dealing with an abandoned Chinese boy), Stefan Braun (a very personal doc in which a man grieves for his lost love), News From Home (Amos Gitai's doc about memory and identity) and Jellyfish (an acclaimed drama about three women in Tel Aviv).

Beyond that generous assortment to choose from, a number of independent foreign films are playing. Some have already opened in the US (La Vie en Rose, The Boss of It All, The Golden Door, Private Fears in Public Places, After the Wedding, Sunflower ), while others have not (Irina Palm, Hunting and Gathering). Overall, I'd have to say that Jerusalem has an enviable variety of films playing.