What went down at last night’s TIFF Tribute Awards

Tears, swears, Joe Biden jokes and at least one A-list actor confessing to “not wearing any underwear”—last night’s TIFF Tribute Awards at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel featured off-the-cuff humour balanced out by the more high-minded objectives of the festival’s fundraiser in support of the Every Story Fund, which promotes equity, diversity and inclusion in film. This year’s honourees included Angelina Jolie, Amy Adams, David Cronenberg, Mike Leigh and Cate Blanchett (whose award was sponsored by Canadian underwear brand Knix—hint hint). Sandra Oh served as the gala’s honorary chair, and Denis Villeneuve, Viggo Mortensen and Salma Hayek all showed up to present to their famous friends. Here’s a look at what went down.

Honorary chair Sandra Oh welcomed the crowd and praised TIFF for supporting artists early on in their careers. She speaks from experience: her first film, Double Happiness, screened at TIFF thirty years ago.

After a gushing intro from Salma Hayek, who called Angelina Jolie the best actor-director she’s ever worked with, Jolie accepted the Media Impact Award. Jolie is at TIFF to present her latest film, Without Blood.

Amy Adams was both teary and sassy while accepting a TIFF Tribute Performer Award, referring to director Marielle Heller as “my kinda bitch.” (They’re in Toronto presenting their movie Nightbitch, so it makes sense).

It was the first time Adams brought her 14-year-old daughter, Aviana, to watch her mom accept an award. Here they are with Adams’s husband, Darren Le Gallo.

Denis Villeneuve presented the award to Adams and praised her performance in his 2016 sci-fi thriller, Arrival.

Cate Blanchett, accepting the Groundbreaker Award, couldn’t quite make out the speech she had written on her phone and instead went rogue. She thanked Knix, the Canadian sponsor of her award, for making undies that women actually want to wear—before noting the irony that she herself was not wearing any.

Viggo Mortensen presented the Norman Jewison Career Achievement Award to his frequent collaborator David Cronenberg, expressing outrage that Canada’s king of body horror has never been nominated for an Oscar.

Accepting his award, Cronenberg made the first Joe Biden joke of the night, noting that he is the exact same age as the outgoing POTUS, so anything could happen on stage. The director of The Shrouds was honoured to be accepting an award named in tribute to his friend, the late Norman Jewison.

Here’s TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey attending his 734th party of the week.

Jharell Jerome accepted the Tribute Performer Award and used his time on stage to pay tribute to Anthony Robles, the IRL wrestler he portrays in the festival film Unstoppable.

Co-stars Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez presented the Tribute Artisan Award to French songwriting couple Camille Dalmais and Clément Ducol, who composed the soundtrack for their new movie, Emilia Perez.

Dalmais and Ducol accepted their award in song.

Finally, the Special Tribute Award went to Zhao Tao for her performance in Jia Zhang-Ke’s Caught by the Tides.