12 Years a Slave was the most popular movie at TIFF 2013

12 Years a Slave was the most popular movie at TIFF 2013

(Image: courtesy of TIFF)

The audiences who hand out TIFF’s People’s Choice Award have a recent history of snubbing the eventual Oscar Best Picture winner: they picked Silver Linings Playbook over Argo last year; Where Do We Go Now? over The Artist in 2011; and Precious over The Hurt Locker in 2009. This year, it looks like TIFF is finally back on track. The festival’s big prize went to Steve McQueen’s grim historical drama 12 Years a Slave, which most critics say is bound for Oscar glory (in addition to our prize for TIFF’s hunkiest red carpet). The first runner-up was Stephen Frears’ Philomena, while Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners took the third spot. Below, the rest of the winners at this year’s TIFF.

• YouTube Award for Best Canadian Short Film: Walter Woodman and Patrick Cederberg’s Noah, a study of behaviour in the digital age that takes place entirely on a teenager’s computer screen

• The City of Toronto and Canada Goose Award for Best Canadian Feature Film: Alan Zweig’s When Jews Were Funny, a documentary that surveys the history of Jewish comedy

• Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film: Shayne Ehman and Seth Scriver’s Asphalt Watches, an adult animated feature chronicling a trans-Canadian road trip

• Prize of the International Critics (FIPRESCI) for Special Presentations: Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida, a drama about a young nun in 1960s Poland who discovers a dark family secret

• Prize of the International Critics (FIPRESCI) for the Discovery Programme: Claudia Sainte-Luce’s The Amazing Catfish, a comedy-drama about a lonely woman who becomes a live-in caregiver for a large family

• The BlackBerry People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award: Sion Sono’s Why Don’t You Play in Hell? (Jigoku de Naze Warui), a bloody tale of a film crew who get embroiled with the yakuza

• The BlackBerry People’s Choice Documentary Award: Jehane Noujaim’s The Square, which chronicles activism, unrest and revolution in Cairo’s Tahrir Square

• The NETPAC Award for World or International Asian Film Premiere: Anup Singh’s Qissa, a sweeping drama set during India’s partition in 1947

• Announced earlier in the festival, the Grolsch Film Works Discovery Award went to Gia Milani for All the Wrong Reasons and the RBC Emerging Filmmakers Competition winner was Christoph Rainer’s Requiem for a Robot