Actor Noah Reid, who stars in Score: A Hockey Musical as teen phenom Farley Gordon, is lifted onto the shoulders of his teammates. (Ken Woroner/Mongrel Media)

The Atlantic Film Festival will open with Score: A Hockey Musical, Michael McGowan's light-hearted romp through Canada's national sport.

The Halifax-based festival, in its 30th year, released its lineup of 180 films on Thursday.

Score, about a family dealing with their hockey sensation son, stars Noah Reid, Marc Jordan and Olivia Newton-John and has cameos by a series of personalities, including Walter Gretzky, Theo Fleury and Stephen McHattie. It will screen Sept. 16 as the Atlantic festival opens.

Score is opening no fewer than five Canadian film festivals this year, beginning with the Toronto International Festival next week. It also opens festivals in Sudbury on Sept. 18, Calgary on Sept. 23 and Edmonton on Sept. 24.

The closing gala will be Barney's Version, an adaptation of Mordecai Richler's novel directed by Richard J. Lewis. It stars Dustin Hoffman and Minnie Driver.

The festival is known for giving a forum to local filmmakers, including debut feature directors Evan Kelly and Laura Dawe.

Dawe brings Light is the Day, about an artist couple who try to learn to live off the land as the world descends into an economic crisis.

Kelly is screening The Corridor, a thriller written by Canadian playwright Josh MacDonald about a group of buddies trying to help a friend deal with his mother's death.

MacDonald's play Halo is the basis for another film at the festival: Faith, Fraud and Minimum Wage, directed by George Mihalka.

The tragicomic tale is based on a real-life incident in Nova Scotia, in which a young coffee shop employee discovers the image of Jesus on the outside wall of her workplace.

Other Canadian films to screen during the festival include:

• Denis Villeneuve's Incendies, based on the play by Wajdi Mouawad.
• Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie, a documentary by Sturla Gunnarsson.
• Bruce McDonald's Trigger, with a script written by acclaimed playwright Daniel MacIvor.
• Sylvain Chomat's animated feature The Illusionist.

The festival also has films from around the world including Joann Sfar's Gainsbourg, from France, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Apichatpong Weerasethakul of Thailand and A Woman, A Gun And a Noodle Shop by China's Zhang Yimou.