WikiLeaks thriller to open at Toronto

THE thriller The Fifth Estate starring English actor Benedict Cumberbatch as Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will take centre stage on the opening day of the Toronto Film Festival.

The 11-day festival, which begins with the world premiere of The Fifth Estate on Thursday (0900 AEST Friday), is a potential launching pad for Oscar hopefuls and attracts a who's who of actors and filmmakers, including Australia's elite.

Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Chris Hemsworth, Mia Wasikowska, Toni Collette, Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn, Guy Pearce and Ryan Kwanten have films at Toronto.

There's also a handful of young Australian first-time feature directors hoping to create some buzz and sell the international rights for their films to big-spending Hollywood studios and film distributors.

Sarah Spillane, who wrote and directed Around the Block, a film set in the inner-Sydney suburb of Redfern and starring a young Australian cast, veteran Jack Thompson and Hollywood actress Christina Ricci, will make its world premiere on Friday (Saturday AEST).

Kidman's potential Oscar winner, The Railway Man, co-starring Colin Firth and partly shot in Queensland, will also hold its world premiere on Friday.

Jackman will continue to build Oscar momentum with his thriller Prisoners.

Aaron Wilson's Canopy, about an Australian airman shot down in the jungles of Singapore during World War II, and Mystery Road, a crime drama shot in the central west Queensland town of Winton and starring Aaron Pederson, Hugo Weaving, Jack Thompson, Zoe Carides and Kwanten, will also be hoping to make waves in Canada.

There will be 366 films, including 146 world premieres, shown at the Toronto Film Festival.

It runs from September 5-15.

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Pacific leaders to take on big polluters

BIG polluters China, the US and India will come in for criticism from small Pacific states threatened by climate change at the Pacific Islands Forum.

Those powerhouses are attending a post-forum dialogue on Friday in the Marshall Islands, where they'll face off with the leaders of low-lying states, whose future could be underwater unless action is taken to stem rising seas and other climate-related impacts.

Pacific leaders on Thursday agreed to the Majuro Declaration, calling on forum members and others to take meaningful steps to address climate change, including boosting their carbon reduction targets.

The host of next year's forum, Palau President Tommy Remengesau, says he plans to build on the momentum on climate change that the Marshall Islands has started.

"This is an issue of our very own survival, and our sustainability as a people, and as small island nations here," he said.

On Friday, US Interior Secretary Sally Jewell will hold one-on-one meetings with several leaders, but her reception from the host nation will be lukewarm, the Marshalls' Foreign Affairs Minister Phillip Muller has indicated.

"We would have expected, if not (Secretary of State John) Kerry, somebody close to him," he said, adding that Mr Kerry's predecessor, Hillary Clinton, attended last year's forum in the Cook Islands.

"When you send a minister of the interior, that's the person who manages the internal affairs of another country, and for us I think that's really more than just a slap in the face."

Along with pressure on the US to boost its climate change commitments, the Marshalls - a former US territory which endured dozens of nuclear tests 60 years ago - will also demand it live up to its obligations to Marshall Islanders still affected by resulting health issues, and settle the $US2 billion ($A2.19 billion) in compensation claims still outstanding.

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