TORONTO

Eavesdropping at the Toronto International Film Festival is a bit like trolling for stock tips. You hear someone mention a movie in the same breath as last year's "The Visitor" with Richard Jenkins, and you crane your neck to catch the title.

Some films, such as Spike Lee's "Miracle at St. Anna," arrived here with name recognition and director, writer, composer and actors in tow, along with the marketing muscle of Disney. Others came looking for distributors in North America, and "Che," "The Hurt Locker" and "The Wrestler" found them.

That means people in Pittsburgh should be able to see those movies, in December for "The Wrestler," January for "Che" and some time in 2009 for "The Hurt Locker."

"Che" is a two-part look at the life of Che Guevara starring Benicio del Toro, while "The Hurt Locker" is an action-fueled fictional film about the American bomb squad in Baghdad. "The Wrestler" stars Mickey Rourke as a 1980s wrestling headliner who now ekes out a living in school gyms and community centers in New Jersey.

Making a feature or a short and emerging from the field of 4,200 submissions to win a festival spot is just the first step in finding an audience. Although it varies from year to year, only 20 percent to 30 percent of the 250 feature films come into the festival with North American distribution.

"Our programmers obviously program not based on if something has distribution or not; they program it based on the quality," Stefan Wirthensohn, director of the festival's Sales & Industry Office, said this week at the Sutton Place Hotel, surrounded by posters, postcards and other promotional materials for movies from Germany, Italy, Britain, Nigeria and elsewhere.

While buyers are looking for movies to play in theaters, on TV or on DVD in places outside the States, it's the deals in North America that prompt the buzz and e-mail blasts from the trade papers. And those announcements have been slow in what has been called a sluggish, skittish or cautious environment.

"The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," for example, debuted in January at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival but is only now finding a distributor, said Michael London, founder of Groundswell Productions, which made the movie.

"Mysteries," from the 1988 novel by University of Pittsburgh graduate Michael Chabon, filmed around the city for more than two months in 2006.

Mr. London, in Toronto as executive producer of "Appaloosa," said he expects to close a distribution deal by later this month and "Mysteries" could be released in the first quarter of 2009.

"It took a long time. It's been a very difficult market in the last six to nine months because smaller movies, the studios are really shying away from, but we're in conversations with actually two or three different companies so we're just finalizing that in the next week or so," he said.

He added that the dark, complicated subject matter of the film is "exactly what distributors are afraid of right now, but it's good."

Groundswell also produced the made-in-Pittsburgh "Smart People" along with "The Visitor," a small drama starring Mr. Jenkins from HBO's "Six Feet Under" that was acquired during the 2007 Toronto festival and released in Pittsburgh in April.

Throughout the industry, there's been much talk about a glut of movies and whether they all can or should find homes.

"It's going to get better," Mr. London said. "There's a lot of retrenchment happening now. There's people pulling out of the business, companies going under, and it'll create a cycle. It will even things out and there'll be more space for movies to thrive and take their time to find an audience."

Mr. London, who produced "Sideways," said it could take nine to 12 months before things find their equilibrium again.

Mr. Wirthensohn characterizes the industry as being "in a phase where it's a little more careful than they've been in some years that I've witnessed. So therefore, deals are happening, maybe not as quick as they used to be at some point because people just want to make sure the deal is right."

In some cases, the deal was right before anyone saw the finished film.

"Some people want to present their movie finished and have the big bidding wars around them. Some other movies need some of those territories closed prior to actually get the production money. So, every movie has its own story."

Take "The Wrestler," which had more chatter in Toronto than movies with Jennifer Aniston or Catherine Deneuve.

"The buyer who bought it for Switzerland and the buyer who bought it for Israel were jumping up and down in my office, saying they were so excited to see it tonight, to finally see the movie they've been waiting for," Mr. Wirthensohn said. "They bought it on footage prior to the festival."

This may be inside baseball, but it determines which movies stop in theaters, go directly to DVD shelves or quietly sink out of sight.

A good festival year for Mr. Wirthensohn "is not just the money, the 15 big deals for this amount of money. It's a lot like the little matchmaking that leads to a deal down the road."

A handful of documentaries could still secure deals, especially "More Than a Game" about a high school basketball team that happens to include LeBron James; "It Might Get Loud," which explores how Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, The Edge of U2 and Jack White of The White Stripes developed their sound; "Food, Inc.," which looks at how modern developments in food production pose health and environmental risks; and "Soul Power," about the three-day music festival held in conjunction with the Rumble in the Jungle boxing match in 1974.

"I think we'll all hear about those soon," he said, but they're unconventional enough that it may take distributors until after the festival to strike or announce deals.