(Toronto) The semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans by Steven Spielberg won the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Posted at 2:35 p.m.
The coming-of-age-themed ode to cinema was announced at an awards breakfast at TIFF, which capped off ten days of filmmaking and festivities. Canadian films also did well at Sunday’s ceremony, as Riceboy Sleeps won the Platform award.
Billed as the legendary director’s most personal project to date, The Fabelmans marked Spielberg’s debut at TIFF.
“As I said on stage the other night, first and foremost I’m happy to have brought this film to Toronto,” Spielberg said in a statement released at the awards show. The warm welcome from everyone in Toronto made my first visit to TIFF so intimate and personal to me and my entire “Fabelman” family. »
The People’s Choice Award, chosen through online voting, is often seen as an indicator of Oscar success.
Last year is the family drama Belfast by Kenneth Branagh, filmed in Northern Ireland, which won the award.
In the vein of Belfast and Rome, The Fabelmans is an auteur film that recounts his own childhood and the family dynamics that shaped him.
Previous Audience Choice winners who went on to land the Best Picture Oscar include Nomadland, Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, The King’s Speech and Slumdog Millionaire.
Women Talking by Canadian Sarah Polley came second. This adaptation of a novel by Miriam Toews focuses on an isolated religious community facing a recurring problem of sexual assault.
Third place is taken by Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mysterythe film by Rian Johnson, which follows its success at TIFF in 2019 and which tells the adventures of detective Benoît Blanc, played by Daniel Craig.
Vancouver writer-director Anthony Shim’s second feature film, Riceboy Sleepsreceived the Platform Prize, awarded by an international jury chaired by Canadian filmmaker Patricia Rozema.
During the announcement of the winner of the $20,000 prize, Mme Rozema said that Riceboy Sleeps stood out among the many international nominees for his “deeply moving story” of navigating a “specifically Canadian version of racism.”
Set in the 1990s, the film explores the rifts that form between a single South Korean mother and her teenage son as they make a new start in Canada.
As he took the stage to accept the award, Shim choked back tears as he thanked his mother and little sister “who always believed that I could do things like this, even when I was at my lowest”.
Black Iceby Oscar-nominated Canadian director Hubert Davis, which examines how anti-Black racism has shaped hockey, received the Audience Documentary Award.
The feature debut of Italian-Canadian filmmaker Luis De Filippis, Something You Said Last Night, won the Shawn Mendes Foundation’s Changemaker Prize, which comes with a $10,000 cash prize. This Canadian-Swiss drama follows a young transgender woman who accompanies her family on vacation.
The Amplify Voices Award for Best Canadian Feature Film, worth $10,000, went to the documentary To Kill a Tiger by Toronto director Nisha Pahuja, which tells the story of an Indian farmer who fights for justice after the gang rape of his 13-year-old daughter. vikingby Quebecer Stéphane Lafleur, won a special mention in the category of best Canadian film.