What Toronto Might Tell Us About the Oscars
Entertainment Lawyer
With something of a reputation as an “Oscar Predictor”, the People’s Choice Award at the TIFF has been the first step in celebrating many a future Best Picture Academy Award winner. As this year’s iteration of the TIFF draws to a close, we have our entertainment lawyer in the know at Blake & Wang P.A., Brandon Blake, with all the insights.
Hamnet Takes It Home
Showcasing the audience vote at the TIFF since 1978, the People’s Choice Award has been taken by many Oscar winners, including 12 Years a Slave, Nomadland, The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, and even American Beauty. Not to mention a long list of films that earned a Best Picture nomination.
We could see two TIFF winners in Oscars contention this year. Last year’s surprise winner, The Life of Chuck, arrived with no distributor for North America. Now picked up by Neon for a recent summer release, it could be in the Oscar running this year. The film debuted at the Telluride Film Festival, with the TIFF being its international premiere. It is currently set for a limited Thanksgiving release, with a wider rollout from 12 December this year.
Among this year’s showcased films, Hamnet took the award - and notably, arrived with North American distribution through Focus Features already in place, meaning it should also be eligible for this year’s Oscar race. The runners-up were Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. A great sweep for Netflix, for sure. Last year, both the People’s Choice winner and runner-up took home their fair share of Oscars.
Other TIFF Winners to Know
Among other notable TIFF winners, we have Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, which took home the inaugural International People’s Choice Award and could be an Oscars wildcard. Sentimental Value and Homebound came in the second and third spots, respectively. The top documentary award went to The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue.
In the Midnight Madness category, Nirvana: The Band, The Show, The Movie took the top spot. Meanwhile, in the varying Short Cuts categories, we have Talk Me (International), The Girl Who Cried Pearls (Canadian), and To The Woods (Animated) as the winners.
Celebrating the best of Canadian filmmaking, we have Blue Heron as the Discovery Award winner, while Uiksaringitara, or Wrong Husband, won the Best Canadian Feature Film Award. The Platform Award was given to To The Victory! with Hen getting an honorable mention.
For now, we can only wait and see how audiences respond to the upcoming release of Hamnet goes, with The Life of Chuck having hit something of a box office wall along the way.
Will the TIFF work its Oscar-detecting magic again in 2025? While there’s still a long awards run to go before the big event, this year has already produced several contenders for the Oscar race. With not one, but two TIFF People’s Choice Award winners to choose from this year, alongside plenty of other strong features, it will be interesting to see how the voters choose.
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