TORONTO -- Jason Reitman hopes "Men, Women and Children" will spark conversation long after the credits have rolled.

The latest film from the Montreal-born director weaves together multiple plotlines as it explores how the hyper-connected nature of our world is changing personal relationships.

For Reitman, the story appeared to reflect many changes taking place in society.

"You can't help but maybe see yourself in one, two or maybe three of the characters, but that's what interests me," Reitman said during an interview at the recent Toronto International Film Festival.

"I've never felt like I've had the answers for any of the questions I go to solve in any of my films. And this movie poses a lot of questions. So I hope to give restaurants and bars a lot of business for the after-movie conversations."

Based on the Chad Kultgen novel, the film features an ensemble cast with Jennifer Garner and Adam Sandler among the big names playing parental roles and budding stars Ansel Elgort and Kaitlyn Denver among a group of young actors whose teenage characters drive the story forward.

"I'm interested in human interaction and I think what I loved about the book is that it dealt simultaneously with so many different relationships that I find myself in -- the relationship of parent and child, the relationship of a husband and wife," Reitman said when explaining why he felt compelled to take the story to the big screen.

"I thought Chad, the author of the book, had done a better job than anyone I had seen of showing how the Internet has just kind of pulled us out of our lives and just kind of drawn us into relationships with strangers. It's a place that we've gone to hide and it just struck me."

While the film delves deep into the way mobile devices and the online world are transforming human interaction, Reitman notes that his movie isn't aiming to come to conclusions on a still-unfolding phenomenon.

"I made a movie about people and people have been evolving for a long time. I think the location is the Internet and I think there's a collective agreement that we don't understand the Internet and we probably won't for many, many decades," he said.

"To consider the Internet a thing is a little tricky because in fact it is just a mirror ... It's the best and worst of us and it's constantly offering us the question of who do we want to be and which side of ourselves do we want to explore."

Some of those darker sides of the Internet, which are highlighted in the film, made Reitman realize he's got his work cut out for himself as a parent.

"When I think about my daughter, she's going to grow up in a world that I don't recognize and so, I'm going to have to be pretty fast on my feet if I'm going to have good advice," he mused, adding that he learned a lot from his young cast.

"On a daily basis they were informing me about why they would use Twitter instead of Facebook and what kind of stuff they post and what kind of stuff they don't. What do they consider public, what do they consider private."

Reitman has a Twitter account, though he admits his notion of privacy online is likely different from that of his young cast.

The director, whose previous films include "Juno" and "Up in the Air," also tries to avoid reading too much into online commentary on his work.

"I have to kind of remind myself not to read it and not to get sucked in to that point of view because certainly when I'm writing a movie or directing a movie I'm not thinking: 'God, what will they tweet?" he said with a wry smile.

Ultimately, Reitman just hopes his latest project will connect with people.

"I make movies to make people feel things," he said. "I think from my point of view, movies are the most communicative art form and they hit people with every sense. So there's a lot of opportunity in film, particularly when its done collectively."

"Men, Women and Children" opens in Toronto on Friday before expanding across the country in the next few weeks.