The frenzy surrounding India's globe-trotting, movie-awards spectacular kicks into high gear in Toronto on Saturday with an open-air cultural festival leading into the 12th annual IIFA Awards.

The City of Toronto's Samsara outdoor festivalwill take over the areas surrounding downtown's Rogers Centre, where theInternational Indian Film Academy Awards take place Saturday night.

More than 50 acts will celebrate South Asian music, dance and fashion, performing on three stages and roving the area throughout the afternoon.

"The tickets for the actual awards show sold out in 10 minutes — 25,000 tickets. Boom. Gone. We also know there are an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 people coming down just to see the green carpet program. So we said, 'Let's build an event for the public [that doesn't] have a ticket. Give them some excitement and let them be part of the Bollywood experience,'" Harold Mah, event support manager for the city of Toronto, told CBC News.

Saturday's Samsara festival, movie screenings taking place across the greater Toronto area,industry workshopsand film news conferences are all leading up to the weekend's climax: the green carpetfollowed by the awards gala.

"[The IIFA weekend] is a very special event. …It's about the industry. It's for the industry. Everybody — the crews, the actors, the directors — all of them come under one roof and celebrate this amazing festival," said music producer Salim Merchant, a past winner and 2011 nominee who works with his brother Sulaiman.

"It's a union of music and movies," Merchant said, adding that because the festivities travel to a different country each year, "it's also about friendship and the collaboration of two countries."

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