Cronenberg, Maddin big winners at TIFF awards
Winnipeg director Guy Maddin was the big winner at the Toronto International Film Festival Awards, capturing the prize for best Canadian feature film for My Winnipeg.
The director, known for his quirky films such as Tales from the Gimli Hospital and The Saddest Music in the World, was given the Toronto-City Award for Best Canadian Feature Film at a gala luncheon held in Toronto on the final day of the festival.
Maddin also goes home with $30,000.
The film has been described as a poetic meditation on the filmmaker’s hometown and his childhood. It was hailed as a work of “remarkable ingenuity [and] originality.”
Meanwhile, another Canadian director scored a major prize. David Cronenberg’s Russian mob thriller Eastern Promises, starring Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts, was handed the Audience Choice Award, which comes with $15,000.
His movie beat out Jason Reitman’s Juno, starring Ellen Page and Michael Cera.
Other Canadians at the podium include StÈphane Lafleur for Continental, Un Film Sans Fusil for best Canadian first feature film.
The film follows four people whose lives unexpectedly intersect because of a man’s disappearance in the woods.
Chris Chong Chan Fui’s Pool, in which the main character is a water reservoir, won best Canadian short.
The international critics’ award, known as the FIPRESCI Prize, was given to La Zona by Rodrigo Pl·. The film explores the relationship between the rich and the poor in Mexico through the strange friendship that develops between two teenage boys.
Other winners include Cochochi, by Israel C·rdenas and Laura Amelia Guzm·n, in the Discovery Award category, while the Artistic Innovation Award went to AnahÌ Berneri’s EnacarciÛn.
EnacarciÛn ó about a B-list actress who makes a difficult trip back to her hometown and faces her family ó was noted for its “economy of vision.”
The jury commended Berneri’s ability to “render the fetishized female body in a distilled and forceful examination of both the movie star and movie industry and their relationship to everyday life.”
The festival, which launched Sept. 6 with Canadian director Jeremy Podeswa’s Fugitive Pieces, featured 349 films over a 10-day period.
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