‘Maudie’ wins big at Canadian Screen Awards
“M audie,” starring recent Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins as reallife Nova Scotia folk artist Maud Lewis and Ethan Hawke as her fish peddler husband, took a leading seven film trophies on Sunday as light-hearted Canuck jokes mixed with politically charged speeches at the Canadian Screen Awards.
The Canada-Ireland coproduction won best picture as well as best supporting actor for Hawke and best actress for Hawkins, who was recently nominated for an Oscar for her starring turn in the Ontario-shot, Academy Award-winning film “The Shape of Water.”
“Maudie”’s other wins included best direction for Aisling Walsh and best original screenplay for Sherry White.
The Newfoundland and Labrador-shot drama details Lewis’s perseverance through juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, poverty and ill treatment from her community and loved ones to become an internationally acclaimed painter.
“Because ‘Maudie’ came out like a year earlier than ‘The Shape of Water,’ there was a lot of ... really early Oscar buzz around her performance in (‘Maudie’) and then ‘The Shape of Water’ came in and kind of stole that buzz,” White said with a laugh backstage.
“Because you can’t be nominated for two (Oscars), so that kind of stole our thunder, but that’s OK.”
Another east coast story took a top honour on the TV side.
CBC/Netflix’s “Anne,” featuring the plucky Prince Edward Island heroine from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic novel, was named best drama series for creators Moira Walley-Beckett and Miranda de Pencier.
Cast member R. H. Thomson landed a supporting-actor trophy earlier in the week, resulting in just two wins for the series that had a leading 13 nominations.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television puts on the Canadian Screen Awards, which handed out awards in 132 categories that also included television and digital media. The bulk of the trophies were handed out earlier in the week. Sunday’s show aired from Toronto’s Sony Centre of Performing Arts on CBC.
Co-hosts Jonny Harris and Emma Hunter offered lighthearted banter about Canada that was balanced out by onstage remarks from attendees about diversity, inclusion and gender inclusion onscreen and off.
“I think a show like ‘Kim’s Convenience’ is proof that representation matters,” said Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, who won an acting trophy for “Kim’s Convenience,” which also won best comedy series.
“When you give people a voice, other people start listening, and when people start listening, things start to change — and we need change, we need to affect change.”
The phrase “representation matters” was also repeated by Eritrea-born actor Nabil Rajo, who won an award for the Montreal car-jacking drama film “Boost,” and Elise Bauman, star of the web series “Carmilla” who got the Cogeco Fund Audience Choice Award.
Other big film winners at Sunday’s show included the Oscarnominated animated drama “The Breadwinner,” which won four trophies, including best adapted screenplay for Anita Doron. Nora Twomey directed the Canadian coproduction, which is based on homegrown author Deborah Ellis’s children’s novel about a young girl who helps her family in Talibancontrolled Afghanistan.
“I think her courage and compassion started it all,” Doran said backstage of Ellis, who based her book on the testimony of Afghan women she spoke with in refugee camps in Pakistan.