TFCA Announced 2016 Awards

Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight wins Best Picture

Toni Erdmann wins three awards, including Best Director for Maren Ade

How Heavy This Hammer, Operation Avalanche and The Stairs

compete for Rogers $100,000 Best Canadian Film Award

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PLEASE CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW TFCA WEBSITE

TORONTO — Capping a year in which issues of race and gender loomed large, the Toronto Film Critics Association has awarded Best Picture to Moonlight, by American director Barry Jenkins, a lyrical and nuanced coming-of-age story about a gay African-American male coming to terms with his sexuality. The film was also honoured with a Best Supporting Actor Award for Mahershala Ali.

The TFCA, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, gave its Best Director Award to German filmmaker Maren Ade for her epic father-daughter comedy, Toni Erdmann. The film, due to be released in Canada early in the new year, won the most prizes, also taking Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actress for Sandra Hüller.

Best Actor went to Adam Driver as a bus-driving poet in Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson.

Writer-director Kenneth Lonergan’s elegiac drama, Manchester by the Sea, won two awards—Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress for Michelle Williams.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Tire Allan King Documentary Award, which comes with a $5,000 cheque, went to Cameraperson, an innovative documentary memoir directed by New York cinematographer Kirsten Johnson.

Zootopia, a satirical tale of a world run by animals directed by Byron Howard and Rich Moore, was named the year’s Best Animated Feature.

The membership also chose the three finalists for the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award: How Heavy This Hammer, directed by Kazik Radwanski; Operation Avalanche, directed by Matt Johnson, and The Stairs, directed by Hugh Gibson (who was also one of two runners-up for the documentary award). The winner will be named at the TFCA Awards Gala, to be held at The Carlu in Toronto January 10, 2017.

The winner of the Stella Artois Jay Scott Prize for an emerging artist, to be announced at a later date, will be presented with a $5,000 cheque at the gala.

As previously announced, the 2016 recipient of the Technicolor Clyde Gilmour Award is Alanis Obomsawin, the veteran NFB filmmaker of such landmark films as Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance. She will present Amanda Strong (Four Faces of the Moon, Indigo, Mia), a young filmmaker of her choice, with $50,000 worth of services from Technicolor at the gala.

The 2016 TFCA Awards Gala will be co-hosted by Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director of the Toronto International Film Festival, and performer extraordinaire Mary Walsh. There the TFCA will reveal the winner of the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award, which carries a record-setting $100,000 cash prize, the richest film award in the country. The runners-up will each receive $5,000.

At the gala the TFCA will also present director Denis Villeneuve with the 20th Anniversary Special Award for Excellence, recognizing his record win of three Rogers Best Canadian Film Awards (for Polytechnique, Incendies and Enemy), and saluting his extraordinary success in making original and powerful films within the Hollywood system without compromising his independent vision.

Please visit TFCA Website for more info on the award winners and event.

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