National Post (National Edition)
Grading out TIFF as it wraps up
People’s Choice often foretells Oscar noms
The Toronto International Film Festival wrapped up Sunday with the coveted Grolsch People’s Choice Award going to Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi’s satire of Nazi Germany in which he plays a child’s idea of Adolf Hitler. Runners-up for the prize were Marriage Story, by Noah Baumbach, and Parasite, a thriller from Korean director Bong Joon-ho that also took the Palme d’Or in Cannes this year.
Why is the People’s Choice so coveted? Well, consider that last year’s winner, Peter Farrelly’s Green Book, went on to win the best picture Oscar, while runner-up Roma from Alfonso Cuarón was a nominee and won for best foreign language film. In fact, since 2011, every TIFF People’s Choice has been the Academy’s choice for at least a best picture nomination.
People’s Choice prizes in the Midnight Madness sidebar went to The Platform from Spain’s Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, with runners-up The Vast of Night by Andrew Patterson, and Blood Quantum from First Nations filmmaker Jeff Barnaby.
In the documentary category, Feras Fayyad’s Syrian doctor doc The Cave took the prize, with Garin Hovannisian’s I Am Not Alone, and Bryce Dallas Howard’s Dads, as runners-up.
In the Canadians-only prizes, Matthew Rankin’s The Twentieth Century, a wonky reimagined biography of William Lyon Mackenzie King, won the $15,000 City of Toronto award for best first Canadian feature, while Sophie Deraspe’s Antigone took the $30,000 Canada Goose award for best Canadian feature.
My own top 10 from TIFF this year: Parasite (Bong Joon-ho), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma), Proxima (Alice Winocour), Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi), Knives Out (Rian Johnson), The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers), The Two Popes (Fernando Meirelles), It Must Be Heaven (Elia Suleiman), Joker (Todd Phillips), and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Marielle Heller).