Here’s the news in full:
Here’s a look at the trailer for winning film Room, based on the best-selling novel by Emma Donaghue:
And here’s a very enthused reaction from Larson herself:
Jumping for joy and majorly teary in my kitchen. Thank you #TIFF15, thank you Toronto, thank you team Room! 🎉💥💖🍻🇨🇦💐😍 https://t.co/LXJJbWKMGM
— Brie Larson (@brielarson) September 20, 2015
Brie Larson now joins other best actress favourites Cate Blanchett (for either Carol or Truth), Charlotte Rampling (for 45 Years) and Jennifer Lawrence (for unseen Miracle Mop comedy Joy)
But not everyone is so happy...
ROOM wins the People's Choice Award! (ROOM is the worst movie I saw at TIFF.)
— Calum Marsh (@calummarsh) September 20, 2015
Reactions on Twitter suggesting that Brie Larson is now a lock for an Oscar nomination:
Room with Brie Larson wins #TIFF15 People's Choice Award. Here comes Oscar Ms. Brie!!! You won't need that "tree" performance. @brielarson
— Clayton Davis (@AwardsCircuit) September 20, 2015
The People's Choice Award @ Toronto Film Fest goes to Brie Larson's #Room. Will definitely be nominated for Oscars now
— Hemanth Kumar C R (@crhemanth) September 20, 2015
Nigel Smith spoke to Room star Brie Larson in Telluride about her role in the freshly award-winning drama.Before Room, she has been best known for roles in Short Term 12 and 21 Jump Street:
Surprise first runner-up Angry Indian Goddesses is a largely improvised comedy about women in Goa who bond on the eve of their friend’s wedding. You can see a trailer here:
But the big one goes to Room, a surprise winner! It’s a drama starring Brie Larson as a woman who is locked in a room with her young son. This will further push Larson as a major contender for best actress. You can read our review here:
And here is the big one. The second runner-up is Spotlight and the first runner-up is a surprise for Angry Indian Goddesses...
The documentary award is going to Winter on Fire, a Netflix film about Ukraine’s fight for freedom. It’ll be available to watch online from 9 October. Here is a trailer:
The winner of the Midnight Madness award is Hardcore, a buzzed about sci-fi film which is entirely POV and stars Sharlto Copley. Here’s our, ermmm, two star review:
It’s time for the audience awards. The ballots have been in operation since 1978. Last year’s winner was The Imitation Game which went onto be a major Oscar contender
The Platform winner is Hurt, a Canadian documentary made by Alan Zweig about a one-time national hero who raised millions of dollars for cancer research. A trailer is here:
Claire Denis is talking about how cold the cinemas have been and she had to buy a jacket. She is sad now to be returning to “civilian life” after her work on the jury is now over
Bigger award now for the Platform strand which has a cash prize of $25k and the jury features Claire Denis
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The Whispering Star has won an award for world or international Asian film premiere. It sounds a bit barmy and is about a humanoid robot deliverywoman and a spaceship shaped like a bungalow. Here is a trailer:
Bernal: “I am so hungover”. Bernal: not looking like a regular person with a hangover.
The Fipresci prize for special presentations goes to Desierto, which is directed by Jonás Cuarón, son of Gravity director Alfonso. He is collecting the award with star Gael García Bernal. Here was our, ermmm, two star review:
The Fipresci prize for discovery goes to Eva Nova, a Slovakian drama about a fallen movie star, starring “the first lady of Slovak cinema”. The trailer can be seen here:
The award for best Canadian feature has gone to Closet Monster, a film about a special effects make-up artist struggling with his sexuality. It was one of the many LGBT films of the festival and received better reviews than some of the bigger titles such as Freeheld and Stonewall. Ooh and it features a talking hamster voiced by Isabella Rossellini! You can see a trailer here:
The award for best Canadian first feature has been given to Sleeping Giant from director Andrew Cividino. It’s a coming-of-age drama and you can see a trailer here:
The award for best Canadian short film (with a $10k prize) has been awarded to Overpass, a family drama about “the power of self-expression in the midst of upheaval”
Cameron Bailey and Piers Handling are our MCs today … they’re looking very snazzy in pin-stripes. They’re thanking a lot of people – all the volunteers and, by name, all the programmers. It’s nice like that.
The frontrunners
Tiff 2015 did not provide quite the usual glut of top quality prestige pictures. There were plenty of polished, perfectly serviceable contenders, but little to knock the socks off. Here’s five films we think are in with a shot:
Where to Invade Next
Michael Moore’s first movie in six years premiered late night on the first evening to enormous warmth. Applause frequently peppered the screening; at the end a big ovation and a heap of goodwill (films which finish on a high up their chances of more stubs). The film sees Moore traveling to Europe and north Africa in the search of inspirational legislation America could fruitfully adopt. North Americans were notably more wowed than foreigners more familiar with, say, employment laws in Italy.
The Danish Girl
Tom Hooper was onto a winner here with The King’s Speech; audiences have been slightly less enthused by his biopic of the first person to have transgender surgery – and it world premiered in Venice, which might nark some. But there’s a lot of warm feeling towards both he and star Eddie Redmayne at the festival, meaning it might just sneak in.
Truth
CBS newsman Dan Rather wept on stage at the premiere of this film about the 2004 wrangle in which he and producer Mary Mapes were hauled over the coals for a tricky-to-verify edition of 60 Minutes concerning George W Bush’s military service record. Truth is absolutely one of those non-innovative yet hard to query crowdpleasers which might, in a weak year, go the distance.
Spotlight
Likewise Tom McCarthy’s return-to-form drama about a pack of Boston Globe reporters (played by Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton and more) who uncovered a paedophile ring amongst priests. It’s an Argo-ish vibe, worthy central scandal and starry ensemble could mean it triumphs. But it too started in Venice, and went to Telluride, too, along the way.
Anomolisa
Charlie Kaufman’s stop-motion, R-rated, Kickstarted-backed mid-life crisis romance was one of the first really major critical successes of this year’s festival. It was also one of the big sales, with Paramount coughing up $5. This suggests adulation isn’t just confined to reviewers, and that it may just make the most left-field winner ever.
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And … action!
Hello and welcome to the first annual Toronto awards ceremony liveblog! It’s the 40th edition of the festival but, we think, the first time they’ve livestreamed it - handy for Team Guardian who have all come home now.
The action kicks off at 12:30 ET, 5:30 BST and lasts about an hour.
The big prize of the night - the People’s Choice award - will come last in the running, and is the most important. In the past it’s been a key Oscars bellweather - the likes of Slumdog Millionaire, The King’s Speech and 12 Years a Slave have all recently progressed to Academy Award glory. There have been a few blips, though: in they gave the gong to Silver Linings Playbook, not runner up Argo; last year to The Imitation Game, in 2011 to, er, Where Do We Go Now?
It’s proved a good predictor despite being voted for by punters not experts: the protocol is to put your ticket stub in a box at the end if you think it’s a cracker. But while the Cannes panel, say, is a kookily-comprised jury, the Tiff crowd are savvy consumers and a heap of industry types. It didn’t quite manage it last year, when The Imitation Game took the prize; but both the best actor and best actress awards did go to films that began in Toronto.
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