“The Life of Chuck” Wins Audience Award, Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez” Takes Second Place

Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” won the Audience Award in the Midnight Madness selection. Several films awarded at Cannes delighted the audience at North America’s largest festival.

The Life of Chuckthe latest adaptation of the master of horror Stephen King, won the most coveted prize on Sunday, September 15 at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the largest film festival in North America.

The Life of Chuck is followed in second place by the daring musical comedy Emilia Perez about a transgender drug lord, then in third place by AnoraPalme d’Or at Cannes, about the life of an erotic dancer in New York.

Directed by Mike Flanagan, The Life of Chuck is taken from the news The Life of Chuck by Stephen King, released in 2020. Charles Krantz, played on screen by British actor Tom Hiddleston, is a banker whose story is told in reverse chronological order and in a rather apocalyptic context. Mark Hamill and Chiwetel Ejiofor complete the cast of the film, which had its world premiere in Toronto, but still lacks a distributor. A situation that should change after Sunday’s victory.

The People’s Choice Award has become something of a harbinger of the Oscars, predicting in recent years some of the future Best Picture winners, such as Green Book And Nomadland. In 2023, the Audience Award was awarded to American Fictionwhich received five Oscar nominations and won the statuette for best adapted screenplay.

The Substance by Coralie Fargeat, who won the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes, won the People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award. A price that Titanium by Julia Ducournau, Palme d’Or 2021, had also obtained in September 2021.

French filmmakers’ “body horror” films are popular at TIFF, where another French star, Juliette Binoche, presented a world premiere The Return by Uberto Pasolini. The feature film marks her cinematic reunion with Ralph Fiennes, with whom she played opposite in The English Patient and for which she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1997.

The festival once again attracted many celebrities this year, from Jennifer Lopez to Angelina Jolie, Jude Law, Salma Hayek and Denzel Washington.