Baseball film hits home run at VIFF

The Vancouver Asahi takes people’s choice award

A movie that honours Vancouver’s historic Japantown baseball team was the big winner at the Vancouver International Film Festival’s audience awards Friday evening.

The Vancouver Asahi, from Japanese director Ishii Yuya, took home the Rogers People’s Choice Award following a tally of festivalgoers’ ballots. The winning film takes a look at the significance of the Asahi to Japanese- Canadians before the start of the Second World War.

The other audience- chosen awards handed out before VIFF’s closing gala include director James Keach’s Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me, for most popular international documentary; Jacob Tierney’s Preggoland for most popular Canadian feature; and Suzanne Crocker’s All the Time in the World, for most popular Canadian documentary.

Meanwhile, Ana Valine was presented with the jury-selected Women in Film + Television Artistic Merit Award for her film Sitting on the Edge of Marlene, which tells the story of a teenage girl joining her substance- abusing mother in the family con business. Valine was also named the winner of the B. C. Emerging Filmmaker Award, one of six juried honours previously announced.

Director Andrew Huculiak won both the Best Canadian Film Award and the Best B. C. Film Award for Violent, an atmospheric film shot in Norway. Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story, directed by Grant Baldwin, won the VIFF Impact Award, while Geneviève Dulude- Decelles was named the most promising director of a Canadian short film for The Cut.

The award for best new international director was shared by two men: Axelle Ropert of France for Miss and the Doctors, and Mikhail Red of the Philippines for Rekorder.