TORONTO?A biopic focused on famed father of evolutionary theory Charles Darwin and his inner struggles with the profound impact of his scientific theories opened the Toronto film festival Thursday.

The world premiere of "Creation" comes on the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of his revolutionary book "On the Origin of Species," which redefined man's worldview by affirming that humans evolved from apes.

The film's title, director Jon Amiel told Canadian media, is a jab at creationists who believe that humanity, life and the universe were created by a supernatural being, based on a literal reading of scripture.

The movement has undergone a renaissance in modern America with many Christians rejecting evolution as running counter to their religious beliefs.

The film is based on Randal Keynes's book "Annie's Box," which was developed after the discovery of a scrap of paper describing the medical treatments that Darwin's eldest daughter Anne underwent in the months before she died aged just 10 years old.

The book claims that Anne's death profoundly affected Darwin, who was Keynes's great-great-grandfather, and his efforts to understand what he once described as "the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horribly cruel works of nature."

The scrap of paper was found just nine years ago in a writing box that belonged to Anne.

The movie script focuses on the period after Anne's death and before the publication of Darwin's masterpiece in 1859, and shows him wrestling with the meaning of his scientific discoveries for his own life.

He is tormented, fearing that he should never have married his first cousin because their "blood was too close."

"Perhaps we endowed her (Anne) with the weakness that killed her," Darwin says in the film.

His wife Emma, a devout Christian, meanwhile rues her husband's declaration of "war on God."

The pair is deftly played by a real-life couple: Paul Bettany, who played a naturalist in "Master and Commander," and Jennifer Connelly, who won an Oscar for her role as the wife of Russell Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind."

Cameron Bailey, co-director of the film festival, said "the everlasting tension between faith and reason, in terms of how people see the world, is certainly present" in many of this year's film offerings.

He pointed to Chilean director Alejandro Amenabar's "Agora," set in ancient Alexandria and starring Rachel Weisz, and Viking flick "Valhalla Rising" by Nicolas Winding Refn.

"There's a standoff between pagans and Christians over how they see the world," said Bailey, noting that in both films Christians are presented as "thugs" or "a rampaging mob."

"Relying on what is rational and provable, or on faith, reflects what many of us are going through right now," he said. "We're living in a world where conflicts, even wars, are still being fought over that divide."

The Toronto film festival is the biggest in North America and has traditionally been a key event for Oscar-conscious studios and distributors because it is attended by a sizable contingent of North American media.

Unlike the Cannes and Berlin festivals, Toronto does not award jury prizes. But moviegoers who bought more than 470,000 tickets for the event in 2008 awarded an audience prize for best motion picture to Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire" which went on to be a runaway success at that year's Oscars.

This year the festival, which runs until September 19, will showcase 271 feature films and 64 shorts from 64 countries, including 95 world premieres.