Bill Nighy as Williams in Living.Ross Ferguson/Courtesy of Number 9 films / Sony Pictures Classics / Mongrel Media
The Floating Film Festival, an event that Roger Ebert once called the “most prestigious and least pretentious film festival in the world,” just wrapped its latest edition, with the Oscar-nominated drama Living and the 9/11 documentary No Responders Left Behind, directed by Canadian Rob Lindsay, taking home the top honours.
The Floating Film Festival, a biannual event that casts cinephiles and filmmakers across the Caribbean on a luxury cruise liner, was co-founded in 1991 by the late Dusty Cohl (one of the three original architects of the Toronto International Film Festival) alongside Ebert and the late Time Magazine film critic Richard Corliss. Now run by Canadian filmmaker Barry Avrich, the event enjoyed its 16th voyage earlier this month, taking place aboard the Silver Seas liner with a program of 25 feature films and docs.
Living, British director Oliver Hermanus’s adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s classic Ikiru starring Bill Nighy (who just earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination this week for the role), won the festival’s Dusty Cohl Best Feature Film Award. Meanwhile, Lindsay’s doc, which follows comedian Jon Stewart and activist John Feal as they take on the U.S. government for failing to ensure health benefits went to 9/11 first responders, won the festival’s Hot Docs Best Documentary Award.
The Floating Film Festival also honoured actor Elliot Gould with its Icon Award, with the prolific actor attending the onboard tribute gala. (Past Icon Award recipients have included Gena Rowlands, Peter Fonda and Rod Steiger.)
“I love film festivals, but what makes this festival so special is the intimacy of a group of film lovers discussing and debating each film with their only care being when the next film is screening versus parking, line ups and sold out screenings,” Avrich told The Globe and Mail. “And Gould was a treasure sparing no detail on his storied career with tales of working with Robert Altman and Igmar Bergman, and his personal relationship with Barbra Streisand.”
Barry Hertz