A DOCUMENTARY WHICH takes an in-depth look at U2 is set to open the Toronto Film Festival – the first time in the event’s history a documentary will launch the festival.

Davis Guggenheim, who also made An Inconvenient Truth, was behind the camera for From The Sky Down, which centres on the release of the album Achtung Baby and the 20 years that followed, reports the Toronto Sun.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the album’s release, and U2 played homage to that fact during their recent headlining slot at Glastonbury. where they opened the show with a number of tracks from Achtung Baby.

Almost Famous director Cameron Crowe ventures into musical documentary with another premiere, Pearl Jam Twenty, tracing the band’s formation and how its members pulled back from the spotlight to cope after its rise to stardom.

Madonna also is headed to the festival in September, as director of  W.E., a film that intercuts between the romance of a modern woman  and the relationship of American socialite Wallis Simpson and Britain’s King Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne for love in the 1930s.

Toronto is among the world’s largest film festivals, a spot where Hollywood studios and international filmmakers debut many prospects that will be in the running for next February’s Oscars.

There’ll also be another Irish element to the festival, with Glenn Close’s Irish drama Albert Nobbs being screened. The movie was filmed in Dublin and December 2010 and January 2011. The title character, played by Close, is a women who disguises herself as a man in 19th century Ireland in order to work.

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- Additional reporting by AP