’COTE D’AZUR," a lighthearted French film about the sex-obsessed members of a vacationing family, opens Frameline 29: The 29th San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival at 7:30 tonight at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco.

The event, one of the major components of this month’s gay pride festivities, continues through June 26 and features a host of celebrities appearing with their films.

Jason Ritter of "Joan of Arcadia" will attend the "Happy Endings" screening. Director Don Roos’ film is an ensemble piece that weaves together stories about love, friendship, family, and the vagaries of life. Ritter stars with Laura Dern, Lisa Kudrow, Tom Arnold and Jesse Bradford.

Tammy Faye Messner will be at the screening of Chris McKim’s "Tammy Faye: Death Defying." Amber Benson, who played Tara on TV’s "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" series, will appear with "Race You to the Bottom."

Porn stars from Colt Studios are scheduled to be at the U.S. premiere of "eXposed," a documentary about the production of a gay, male erotic film.

And Maurice Bonamigo, a high-class hairdresser from Palm Beach and a gay Republican, will take his chances and appear at the showing of "Gay Republicans."

In all, the festival consists of hundreds of features and shorts from 34 countries.

"One of the unique things is the amount of sports involved with this year’s films," says festival director Michael Lumpkin. "One thing we saw emerging this year is a lot of queer people in film are getting into sports - everything from documentaries about LBGT people participating in

sports to narrative features where the lead characters participate in sports in the films."

Lumpkin singles out "My Brother Nikhil," a movie about a competitive swimmer and one of the first films from India with a gay character who is HIV positive.

He also mentions "Summer Storm," a German coming-out, coming-of-age story where the lead character is on a rowing team.

Also noteworthy, he says, is the high number of transgender films - more than 25. "There are more and more films about gender identity," says Lumpkin. "It’s a big deal because that community hasn’t really been represented widely in films."

Highlights include the films "Transamerica" and "Transgeneration." The closing-night feature, "Transamerica," stars Felicity Huffman of "Desperate Housewives" as a male-to-female transsexual who discovers she has a son days before she is scheduled to finish her gender reassignment surgery.

The Fenton Bailey-Randy Barbato eight-part documentary "Transgeneration" follows four transgender college students for one academic year. It gets its world premiere at the festival.

Bay Area films at the event include Sasha Aicken’s "Blood, Sweat, and Glitter"; Sean Mullen’s "Trannyshack"; Victor Silverman and Susan Stryker’s "Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria"; Shar Rednour’s "Healing Sex"; Keith Wilson’s "Lesbian Grandmothers from Mars"; and Jenni Olson’s "The Joy of Life."

Tickets to most films are $7-$9; special programs and parties cost $20-$90.

Venues include the Victoria and Castro theaters and the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco and the Parkway Theater in Oakland.