Midnight's Children, an adaptation of the Booker Prize-winning novel by Salman Rushdie, is one of the most highly anticipated films to debut at the Toronto International Film Festival this September.

It’ll be a busy month for Rushdie, as he’ll also be launching his new memoir, Joseph Anton.  For the new movie, Rushdie converted his best-selling novel into an arresting and whimsical screenplay in a collaboration with Deepa Mehta, the Academy Award-nominated Canadian director. The fantastical film, like the novel, centers on two children, both born at exactly midnight and switched at birth on the night of India's independence on August 15, 1947. Imbued with magical, telepathic powers, the lives of the two children mysteriously seem to constantly intertwine, and the two find themselves deeply linked to the course of India's future.

It’s magical realism, done right, by a powerhouse pair: Mehta, the acclaimed director of the provocative “Elements” trilogy of films, and Rushdie, a masterful novelist and a mesmerizing public speaker who knows about the resonant role that stories play in our lives.