Anthropocene earns double the praise
Toronto, Vancouver film critics honour Canadian environmental documentary
Professional film writers and critics in two of Canada’s biggest film-production cities — Toronto and Vancouver — have praised a Canadian film about environmental change.
The Toronto Film Critics Association handed out Canada’s richest film prize, the $100,000 Rogers Award for best Canadian film, to directors Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky and Nicholas de Pencier on Tuesday night for their film Anthropocene: The Human Epoch. Anthropocene was a winner also among Vancouver film critics, who chose it as best documentary at their awards ceremony held Monday.
At the Toronto event, the winners promptly gave the money away.
In an only-in-Canada moment, Baichwal praised the other two nominees — Ava, a first feature by Sadaf Foroughi, and the documentary Maison du Bonheur from Sofia Bohdanowicz — and then announced that she and her co-directors would split the prize money three ways with these deserving, smaller-budget productions. Furthermore, Anthropocene’s share of the prize would go to the Toronto festival’s Share Her Journey program, which is working to help increase opportunities for women in the film industry. Notably, all three nominated films this year were directed or co-directed by women.
Baichwal is a three-time winner of the Rogers prize. She and Burtynsky won in 2013 for their film Watermark, and she was also the recipient in 2006 for Manufactured Landscapes, though the prize that year had no cash value. Anthropocene, which included exhibits at the National Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario, continues her theme of exploring the way humankind is modifying the planet through large-scale construction.
The Toronto critics’ group also celebrated award-winners Tantoo Cardinal, whose body of acting work over more than five decades earned her the Technicolor Clyde Gilmour Award; writer-director Molly McGlynn, winner of the Stella Artois Jay Scott Prize for an emerging artist; and Morgan Neville, winner of the RBC Allan King Documentary Award for his film Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, about TV’s Fred Rogers. The group also named Genevieve Citron the recipient of its first emerging critic award.
Meanwhile, the Vancouver Film Critics Circle named the Haida-language drama Edge of the Knife best Canadian feature. The 19th-century mystery-thriller, from Indigenous directors Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown, is billed as the first feature-length film made in the endangered Haida language.
Edge of the Knife took four prizes from the VFCC’s Canadian awards ceremony on Monday, including best director, best B.C. film, and an acting trophy for Tyler York. Roads in February star Arlen Aguayo-Stewart also won an acting award, while the film’s director, Katherine Jerkovic, won a prize for an emerging Canadian filmmaker. Other winners included actors Aaron Read and Kayla Lorette for When the Storm Fades. Keith Behrman won best screenplay for a Canadian film for Giant Little Ones.
Last month the VFCC, which comprises Vancouver-based writers and critics, named its international award winners. Alfonso Cuarón’s black-andwhite drama Roma took best picture and best foreign language film.