Great News: Room won the People's Choice award at TIFF!
It couldn't have happened to a more deserving film and I mean that literally since it was the best of the 29 films I caught there. Confession: I really thought that Spotlight would take it since festival goers wouldn't shut up about that one. In the past twenty years the People's Choice Award has been a very solid indicator of a future Best Picture nomination. In fact, with one exception only (Hotel Rwanda) if the winner was from the States or the UK, it was nominated at the Oscars. Canadian winners (Eastern Promises and The Hanging Garden) as well as most of the non-English language winners weren't so lucky. A Best Picture nomination would be a very big deal for A24 as a young distributor but they've already released so many fine and daring films they've earned one, don't you think?
How high would you rank the film now in your predictions?
Winners List
People's Choice Room (Lenny Abramson)
1st Runner Up: Angry Indian Goddesses (Pan Nalin)
2nd Runner Up: Spotlight (Tom McCarthy)
FIPRESCI Discovery: Eva Nová (Marko Skop)
FIPRESCI Special Presentation: Desierto (Jonás Cuarón)
NETPAC Asian Cinema Award: Whispering Star (Sion Sono)
Toronto Platform Award: HURT (Alan Zweig)
Honorable Mention: Neon Bull, The Promised Land, The Clan
Best Short Maman(s) (Maïmouna Doucouré)
Honorable Mention: Rate Me (Fyzal Boulifa)
Best Canadian Feature Closet Monster (Stephen Dunn)
Honorable Mention: My Internship in Canada (Philippe Falardeau)
Best Canadian First Feature Film Sleeping Giant (Andrew Cividino)
Best Canadian Short Overpass (Patrice Laliberté)
Honorable Mention: Bacon & God's Wrath (Sol Friedman)
The odd thing about the Canadian prizes is that Closet Monster, my favorite LGBT movie from the fest, which won the "Canada Goose" for Best Canadian Film is also a First Feature; there's another prize for that that it did not win! Of the other award winners, I only managed to catch Spotlight, Room, and the Toronto Platform Honorable Mention The Clan. It's a gut-wrenching true crime drama about a notorious family in Argentina who kidnapped members of other upper class families, some of whom they knew personally, for ransom money. I suspect it will be Argentina's Oscar submission but they don't announce until the end of the month.