OTTAWA (AFP) ― The Toronto film festival will open this year with Rian Johnson’s sci-fi mob thriller “Looper” and see new works by Ben Affleck, Dustin Hoffman and Joss Whedon, organizers said Tuesday.

“I saw Rian’s debut feature ‘Brick’ (2005) at the Sundance festival and was impressed by his ability to engage both the mind and the heart,” said Toronto film festival director Cameron Bailey.

“We were fortunate enough to premiere his follow-up film ‘The Brothers Bloom’ (in 2008).”

“Now, with ‘Looper,’ Rian has taken his filmmaking to a new level, and we can’t wait to present it to the Toronto audience in the most prestigious platform we can offer. This is a new kind of opening night: an exciting, thinking-person’s action film from a director who really understands the genre.”

The American director’s third feature film starring Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Noah Segan, Piper Perabo, and Jeff Daniels recounts the fantastical tale of a time-traveling hired gun who mops up 30 years in the past for the mob until his bosses send back his future self (Bruce Willis) for assassination.

It is the first science fiction film to open the Toronto film festival, which has in the recent past opened with a U2 rockumentary, a hockey musical, a Charles Darwin biopic, and a World War I epic.

North America’s largest film festival, which runs from runs from Sept. 6 to 16, will also feature the ”most diverse“ gala presentations to date from Japan, China, India, Britain, Denmark, Italy, the United States and Canada.