TIFF: Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans wins Audience Award

Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans received People’s Choice top honors on Sunday at the Toronto Film Festival, which was concluding its 47th edition.

Spielberg’s latest film won TIFF’s Best Audience Award, which is often a barometer of future Oscar nominations. “This is the most personal film I’ve ever made and the warm welcome from everyone in Toronto made my first visit to TIFF so intimate and personal for me and all my family fable man Family,” the director said in a statement after announcing his win.

the fabelmans, co-written with Tony Kushner, marks the first time the Academy Award winner has debuted a film at the Toronto Film Festival. Memories of Childhood will be released on November 11th through Universal. Another autobiographical family film about the childhood of a director, Kenneth Branagh BelfastShe was named Best Audience Award Winner in Toronto 2021.

The first runner-up for the top audience award was Sarah Polley women speakwhile the second runner-up was Rian Johnson Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery from Netflix.

The People’s Choice Award for Best Documentary went to Hubert Davis’ Black ice, a film about systemic racism in Canadian ice hockey, while the top audience award for Midnight Madness’s best sidebar title went to Eric Appel Strange: The Al Yankovic Story.

Previous TIFF Audience Award Winners – including Room, La La Land, 12 years a slave and nomadic country – got a ride from the Canadian festival on their way to Oscar wins.

The People’s Choice Awards are voted for by TIFF participants. Participants could not vote online more than once using their email address, as TIFF measured the provenance of each vote and cross-checked it with the festival’s ticket-buyer information and database.

At the juried awards ceremony, Vancouver-based director Anthony Shim won the Platform award for Riceboy is sleeping, a family drama about expulsion, reconciliation and love. “I’m thrilled to have it Riceboy is sleeping recognized by the programmers, the platform’s jury and the audience of this year’s TIFF. It’s been amazing to see the reaction to the film that our team worked so hard to make and this is such a deeply personal project,” said Shim, who directed, wrote, edited, produced and starred in the film, in an explanation.

The FIPRESCI award went to Basil Khalil’s feature film debut A Gaza weekendwhile the NETPAC award was picked up by Jub Clerc for her own debut film, cute likea coming-of-age story about a 15-year-old indigenous girl.

The Short Cuts prize went to snow in september, by director Purev-Ochir, and the award for Best Canadian Short Film went to Simo, from Aziz Zoromba. The Share Her Journey award went to director Carol Nguyen for nanitic, a short film made during the pandemic; The director was diagnosed with COVID-19 while attending the 47th edition of Toronto.

As a further award, the Amplify Voice Award went to Martika Ramirez Escobar Leonore will never die after the film also received a Sundance Special Jury Prize. Nisha Pahujas To kill a tiger about an Indian family’s search for justice after a young girl was brutally assaulted, received the Amplify Voices Award for Best Canadian Feature Film, while Best Feature Film by a BIPOC Filmmaker went to while we watched by Vinay Shukla.

The TIFF juries also presented Luis De Filippis with the Changemaker Award for her latest film, Something you said last night.

On the film sales front, dealmaking took a back seat to the big buyers who have been scouring the festival’s schedule for a hidden gem over the last 10 days. Industry visitors report a lack of commercial titles and a multitude of fixed titles with US distribution already in place. The festival had the Hollywood studios and streamers and other film buyers local to Toronto, but barely brought out their wallets as part of TIFF’s informal film market.

Roberto Stabile, Head of International Development at ANICA, the Association of Italian Producers, said The Hollywood Reporter that Italian film titles were selling well in Cannes and, more recently, Venice, prompting filmmakers to look for additional sales activity alongside Rome’s MIA market in mid-October. Stabile said the focus in Toronto would be finding co-production funding and partners from North America to fill out their film development plans.

“Italy is not only a beautiful country with beautiful landscapes and good food. Italy is a very important co-production partner and also for foreign films shot in Italy with a 40 percent tax credit,” Stabile stressed. After Cannes, most film sellers and buyers seemed to be saving their best ammunition for the American film market.

The Toronto market wasn’t entirely dry, but the biggest deal was – Alexander Payne’s The Leftovers Landed at Focus Features for around $30 million – wasn’t a splashy premiere and was instead bought at TIFF as part of an informal market and outside of the festival’s main programme.

Highland Film Group COO Delphine Perrier said their indie banner has generated territorial sales for films going into production, such as country of evilstarring Russell Crowe and Liam Hemsworth, which starts filming in Australia next week, and blood for dust, starring Kit Harington, Josh Lucas and Scoot McNairy, is slated to start filming this fall.

“Toronto has done well and it’s been a strong market for us. We’ve had a great response from buyers sleeping dogs and blood for dust – There was a lot of competition in key territories, which is surprising since Toronto is a film festival and doesn’t have an official market component,” Perrier said.

Elsewhere, Toronto was working to catch up with Cannes or the American Film Market as a launch pad for packages and presales. Erin Creasey, director of industry development at Ontario Creates, which markets Ontario to major Los Angeles studios and streamers as a location for original footage, said major online platforms like Netflix and Amazon participated in their International Financing Forum to look for projects in the screenplay phase or discuss possible new ones.

“We present the list of projects to their heads of development, and if they’re interested in speaking to the producers, they come to the event,” Creasey said of IFF, with previous editions at TIFF spawning titles like the Anna Kendrick star Alice, darling and Lindsay MacKays The jury mugboth of which were shown in Toronto this year.