The Toronto audience was feeling Precious this year as they picked their favourite movie at the 10-day 34th Toronto International Film Festival: Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, won the Cadillac People's Choice Award on Saturday, setting the film up as an early awards season contender.
The movie is based on a 1996 novel about an illiterate, pregnant teenager and her struggles to rise above her abusive background. Both the star, Gabourey Sidibe, and the actress-comic, Mo'Nique, who plays her self-centred mother, could be Academy Award nominees.
Unlike last year's audience winner, Slumdog Millionaire, which went on to sweep the Oscars, Precious (which opens in Canada on Nov. 20) already had momentum coming into TIFF. The film won the audience award as well as the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, where it had its premiere last January. After its Sundance success, talk-show host Oprah Winfrey and director Tyler Perry joined the film as executive producers and came to Toronto to help promote the film.
At Saturday's awards ceremonies, Laurie May, co-president of the Canadian distributoAr, Maple Pictures, read a letter from director Lee Daniels (in San Sebastian for another film festival) who dedicated the award to festival co-director, Cameron Bailey, for his ongoing support of Daniels's work.
"I cannot begin to express my gratitude, the audience award holds such an important meaning - I made this film for every person out there who ever looked in the mirror and felt unsure about the person looking back - this is not an art film for a select few, this is a movie that everyone can relate to" he wrote.
The runners-up for audience award were Mao's Last Dancer, a film by Bruce Beresford based on the autobiography of Li Cunxin, a ballet star who defected from China to the Houston Ballet in 1981, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Micmacs, a magic realist comic revenge fantasy from the director of Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (known as Amélie), which won the audience award in 2001.
The $30,000 top Canadian film (named The City of Toronto and Astral Media's The Movie Network Award for Best Canadian Feature Film) went to Ruba Nadda's Cairo Time, a drama about a United Nations worker's wife (Patricia Clarkson) and her unexpected romantic connection with a café owner (Alexander Siddig) during an interlude in Egypt. Bernard Emond's La Donation (The Legacy), about a woman doctor taking a temporary placement in a depressed Quebec town, earned a special jury citation.
The Cadillac People's Choice Award for Documentary went to Canadian-born, New Zealand director, Leanne Pooley for The Topp Twins, a portrait of a pair of twin lesbian country music and comedy stars.
The Cadillac People's Choice Award for Midnight Madness went to Australian Sean Byrne's The Loved Ones, in which a young man faces dire consequences for rejecting a classmate's invitation to go to a dance.
The $15,000 SKYY Vodka Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film went to Montreal's Alexandre Franchi's The Wild Hunt, a drama set in the context of a historical role-playing game.
The $10,000 Best Canadian Short prize went to Pedro Pires, for Danse Macabre.
The FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) Prizes were awarded to two festival films. The Discovery prize was given to Indian director Laxmikant Shetgaonkar for The Man Beyond the Bridge, a romance set in the forests of Western Goa. The Special Presentation award went to French director Bruno Dumont for Hadewijch, a drama about a young woman with a dangerously intense sense of spiritual purpose.
