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The award for Best Canadian Short Film goes to Chris Chong Chan Fui’s Block B. The film examines the lives of an expatriate Indian community weaving itself through the contradicting soundscapes of contemporary Malaysia. The jury notes: “simple, graphic, hypnotic – this is an achievement of bringing cinema to its bare essentials.” A special citation goes to Denis Villeneuve’s Next Floor. The short film jury members are filmmakers Louise Archambault and Min Sook Lee, and Rotterdam International Film Festival programmer Peter van Hoof. The award offers a $10,000 cash prize and is supported by the National Film Board of Canada.
CITYTV AWARD FOR BEST CANADIAN FIRST FEATURE FILM
The Citytv Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film goes to Marie-Hélène Cousineau and Madeline Piujuq Ivalu’s Before Tomorrow “for its arresting beauty, its humanist, innovative storytelling and its artistic integrity in capturing the narrative of a people through an intimate tale.” Based on the novel by acclaimed Danish author Jørn Riel, Before Tomorrow
CITY OF TORONTO-CITYTV AWARD FOR BEST CANADIAN FEATURE FILM
The City of Toronto-Citytv Award for Best Canadian Feature Film goes to Rodrigue Jean’s Lost Song. Elisabeth (Suzie LeBlanc), Pierre (Patrick Goyette) and their new-born baby move to a summer cottage in a remote area north of Montreal. Isolation and the difficulty of coping with her new situation and surroundings send Elisabeth into a spiral of depression. The jury described the film as “constantly surprising,” and “profound, masterful and devastatingly sad.” A special citation goes to Atom Egoyan’sAdoration.
CANADIAN FEATURE FILM AWARDS JURY
Winners of the Citytv Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film and the City of Toronto-Citytv Award for Best Canadian Feature Film were selected by a jury of film industry professionals, consisting of filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming, filmmaker and actor Sarah Polley, programmer for the Locarno Film Festival Vincenzo Bugno, and producer Michael Burns.
Winners of the Citytv Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film and the City of Toronto-Citytv Award for Best Canadian Feature Film were selected by a jury of film industry professionals, consisting of filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming, filmmaker and actor Sarah Polley, programmer for the Locarno Film Festival Vincenzo Bugno, and producer Michael Burns.
DIESEL DISCOVERY AWARD
The Diesel Discovery award goes to Steve McQueen’s Hunger.
PRIZE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRITICS (FIPRESCI PRIZE)
The Festival welcomed an international FIPRESCI jury for the 17th consecutive year. This year’s jury was expanded and considered eligible films in the Discovery and Special Presentation programmes. The jury members consist of jury president Jonathan Rosenbaum (USA), Nick Roddick (United Kingdom), Elie Castiel (Canada), Ranjita Biswas (India), Kim Linekin (Canada) and Pablo Scholz (Argentina).
The Prize of the International Critics (FIPRESCI Prize) for Discovery is awarded to Derick Martini’sLymelife. From the filmmaking team behind Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire (TIFF 1999) comes an examination of first love, family dynamics and the American Dream in late 1970s Long Island, as seen through the innocent eyes of a 15-year-old. Scott Bartlett (Rory Culkin) is a gentle boy –
The Prize of the International Critics (FIPRESCI Prize) for Special Presentations is awarded to Steve Jacobs’ Disgrace. Professor David Lurie’s (John Malkovich) life falls apart after he has an impulsive affair with one of his students. Forced to resign from Cape Town University, he escapes to his daughter’s farm in the Eastern Cape. Their relationship is tested when they both become victims of a vicious attack.
CADILLAC PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD
The Cadillac People’s Choice Award is voted on by Festival audiences. This year’s award goes to Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. From acclaimed director Danny Boyle comes a story about a kid with nothing, who has everything to lose. Jamal Malik, an 18-year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India’s “Who Wants to be A Millionaire?”
First runner-up is Kristopher Belman’s More Than A Game and the second runner-up is Cyrus Nowrasteh’s The Stoning of Soraya M. The award offers a $15,000 cash prize and custom award, sponsored by Cadillac.
New release: the Cohen brothers strike again
In the past the Toronto International Film Festival helped to set up Hollywood’s awards season.
This year it may be more about solving the industry’s problems.
This year’s film festival has devoted some prime spots to movies that are not so much jockeying for position in the forthcoming Oscar race as fighting to be seen at all. Even with strong credentials, several featured pictures have been sideswiped by corporate consolidation, a weak market for independent films and producers’ wariness of an audience that has often shunned the difficult.
“Pride and Glory,” a New York City police drama that will be shown at an evening gala on Sept. 9, for instance, was shot more than two years ago by the director Gavin O’Connor (“Miracle”), with Colin Farrell and Edward Norton in lead roles. Warner Brothers, flush with films like this one after ingesting its corporate sibling New Line Cinema, is hoping Toronto will generate excitement for a much-delayed Oct. 24 release.
Another gala (on Sept. 10) celebrates “The Lucky Ones,”about returning Iraq veterans on a bittersweet road trip back home. Directed by Neil Burger, it stars Tim Robbins,Rachel McAdams and Michael Peña, who are expected to appear at the festival in support of a film finally set for release, on Sept. 26 by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions. Confronted by Iraq-theme box-office disappointments like“Stop-Loss,” “Redacted” and “In the Valley of Elah,” the filmmakers and distributors have struggled for months to come up with the best way to market a movie in which the word “Iraq” is not mentioned though the war infuses every scene.
North American premieres are also set for two challenging films, Steven Soderbergh’s two-part “Che” (each part about two hours long) about Che Guevara; and “Synecdoche, New York,” a movie, directed by Charlie Kaufman, about a play within a city within a warehouse. Both screened at Cannes in May, without finding a distributor there. “Synedoche” is now set for release by Sony Pictures Classics; the producers of “Che” are finalizing a deal for United States distribution, their spokeswoman said.
“I think we’ve seen a redoubling of effort on the part of filmmakers,” Cameron Bailey, a co-director of the festival, said in a telephone interview. He spoke of a sense that filmmakers are telling deeper and more personal stories, rather than chasing commercial prospects, which may be diminishing in any case.
Mr. Bailey said he believed the festival’s selections were among its strongest ever. He particularly noted two films, “The Wrestler,” by Darren Aronofsky, which has been looking for a United States distributor, and “Rachel Getting Married,” by Jonathan Demme, set for release by Sony Pictures Classics, as works by directors in peak form. To avoid sprawl the 10-day festival has become smaller, despite a growing number of submissions, which reached 4,200 this year. The number of features was intentionally trimmed, to 249 from 261. But because last year’s festival included some unusually long works, officials expect to screen 20,693 minutes of film, down 30 percent from 29,764 minutes last year. In relatively short supply are the kind of big studio releases — “Michael Clayton,” “Walk the Line,” “Ray,” “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” — that in the past used Toronto to start Oscar campaigns.
Two films that may fit the mold this year are “Flash of Genius,” a Universal Pictures release, directed by Marc Abraham and starring Greg Kinnear as the engineer who invents the intermittent windshield wiper; and Spike Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna,” a Touchstone Pictures film about a group of black soldiers in Italy during World War II.
Other principal attractions are Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Burn After Reading,” a comic caper from Focus Features, with George Clooney and Brad Pitt among its stars, and “The Secret Life of Bees,” from Fox Searchlight, adapted and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood from a Sue Monk Kidd novel.
As in the past, other films will come looking for distribution. Among those are “Me and Orson Welles,” directed by Richard Linklater with Zac Efron, Claire Danes and Christian McKay; “Lovely, Still,” directed by Nik Fackler with Ellen Burstyn and Martin Landau; and “Management,” directed by Stephen Belber, with Jennifer Aniston, Steve Zahn andWoody Harrelson.
Available films are sure to outnumber ready buyers in a market that has seen New Line, Warner Independent Pictures and Paramount Vantage fold or retrench. Which means that Toronto this year is likely to be more work than play.
“Filmmakers have to take a lot more ownership of their projects,” said Cynthia Swartz, a partner in the publicity firm 42West, which represents more than a dozen films showing at Toronto. She spoke of a growing need for even the most established filmmakers to baby their works through a festival apparatus that can keep a film alive when commercial distribution is slow to materialize.
“They just don’t have as many options as they used to.”
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