SCREEN GEMS
The Breadwinner, Maudie among big CSA winners
The Oscar-nominated TORONTO animated drama The Breadwinner and the Nova Scotia-set biopic Maudie were among the big winners on what was the last of several Canadian Screen Award galas on Sunday night.
The Breadwinner, based on Canadian author Deborah Ellis’s children’s novel about a young girl who helps her family in Afghanistan, won trophies in the pre-broadcast show including best adapted screenplay for Anita Doron.
“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.
“Everybody on the team was making the same film with the same intention — to be authentic, to tell the truth and to tell the truth of this girl.”
Maudie won trophies including best motion picture, best original screenplay for Sherry White and best supporting actor for Ethan Hawke, who plays the husband to Sally Hawkins as lead character, real-life Nova Scotia folk artist Maud Lewis. Hawkins won as best actress for a leading role in film.
Hawkins was recently nominated for an Oscar for her starring turn in the Ontario-shot, Oscarwinning film The Shape of Water.
“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.”
CSAs co-hosts Jonny Harris and Emma Hunter kicked off Sunday’s show by riffing on all things Canuck.
The two did a bit on the chemistry between Olympic ice dance champions Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue, cracked cloning jokes about the Space sci-fi hit Orphan Black and remarked on how it took four anchors to replace Peter Mansbridge on the CBC flagship news program The National.
“Makes me feel better that it only took two of us to replace (last year’s host) Howie Mandel,” said Harris, a CBC staple on the series Still Standing and Murdoch Mysteries.
Other multiple winners included Hochelaga, Land of Souls, which was Canada’s pick for the best foreign-language film category at this year’s Oscars but ultimately didn’t make the short list. It won trophies for best art direction and best cinematography.
Bahar Nouhian of the Tehran teen drama film Ava won best actress in a supporting role.
“For all the women, thank you,” Nouhian said onstage.
Nabil Rajo won best actor in a film role for the Montreal-set crime drama Boost.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television puts on the awards, which honour TV, film and digital media. Most trophies were handed out earlier in the week.
Winners at previous galas included the CTV detective drama Cardinal, which took a five trophies including for Billy Campbell as best actor in a limited series, and CBC’s Baroness von Sketch Show and Alias Grace, with four each.
Baroness took trophies including best sketch comedy program or series and best writing in its genre.
Alias Grace, a miniseries based on Margaret Atwood’s novel, took awards including writing for Sarah Polley and directing for Mary Harron. Sarah Gadon won as best actress for the limited series.
Among TV awards, Alexander Ludwig won as lead actor in a drama for Vikings. Tatiana Maslany won lead actress in a drama for Orphan Black. Lead actor in a comedy was Paul Sun-Hyun Lee for Kim’s Convenience. Lead actress in a comedy was Catherine O’Hara, for Schitt’s Creek.
This year’s CSAs boasted a “solid slate” of female nominees.
The effort to eradicate sexual misconduct in the entertainment industry was a topic on the red carpet as attendees wore pins for the #AfterMeToo group, aimed at mobilizing reform on sexual violence in the workforce.
“It’s a practical and structural way of dealing with the problems that have been revealed with the #MeToo movement,” Atwood said of the #AfterMeToo movement, speaking on the red carpet.