TORONTO — Slumdog Millionaire, an inspirational comedy about a poor Mumbai orphan who unexpectedly knows all the answers to the Indian version of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?, was the audience favourite at the 33rd Toronto International Film Festival, which came to a close on Saturday.
The film, by English director Danny Boyle ( Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) won the $15,000 Cadillac People's Choice Award. Boyle credited the generosity of the city of Mumbai with the warmth of the story, which was adapted by Simon Beaufoy ( The Full Monty) from the book Q&A by Indian writer Vikas Swarup.
The first runner-up for the People's Choice Award was the American basketball documentary, More than a Game. The second runner-up was The Stoning of Soraya M, an American movie based on the real-life stoning of an Iranian woman on a phony adultery charge.
Indian actress Freida Pinto, 23, who co-starred in Slumdog Millionaire and who has relatives in Mississauga, Ont., was on hand to accept the audience award.
Actor Freida Pinto, left, accepts the Cadillac People's Choice Award for her movie Slumdog Millionaire at the closing brunch at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday. (J.P. Moczulski /The Canadian Press)
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The part-time model and TV show host said the role was her first part in a movie. “I did my first audition and had to keep on auditioning twice a month for six months until I was finally told I got the part,” she said.
Slumdog Millionaire, which played at Telluride Festival and will close the upcoming London Film Festival and the Goa Film Festival later this fall, is expected to open in late November in North America.
The Toronto International Film Festival, which co-director Cameron Bailey described as the biggest public film festival in the world, lasted 10 days and screened more than 300 films. In addition to the usual screenings, about 150,000 people participated in free films and concerts at Yonge-Dundas Square in the city's core.
Though the festival received some criticism for favouring donors in its drive to complete fundraising for the festival's new centre, the $196-million Bell Lightbox, TIFF's director Piers Handling said the festival had run with few bumps and he had positive feedback from the public and industry. (So far, $147-million has been raised for the Bell Lightbox.)
Mr. Handling noted that at a time when the economics of the movie industry are “gloomy”, the industry's reception of this year's TIFF was generally buoyant.
Among the break-out films among critics at this years event were Jonathan Demme's sprawling family movie, Rachel Getting Married, starring Anne Hathaway as a recovering drug addict attending her sister's wedding, Darren Aranofsky's The Wrestler, with Mickey Rourke as a professional wrestler who can't stay away from the ring despite life-threatening health problems, and Katherine Bigalow's punishingly tense Iraq drama, The Hurt Locker.
The $30,000 City of Toronto-CityTv Award for best Canadian feature film went to Roderige Jean's Lost Song, something of an upset against higher profile films including Paul Gross's opening night film Passchendaele and Deepa Mehta's Heaven on Earth. The drama follows a couple, Elizabeth (Suzie Leblanc), and Pierre (Patrick Goyette), who move to a cottage in a remote area north of Montreal, where Elizabeth sinks into a depression. The jury described the film as “profound, masterful and devastatingly sad.” LeBlanc, an internationally known Acadian-born soprano in her first acting role, said she was “very surprised” by the prize.
As well, the Canadian film jury awarded a special citation went to Atom Egoyan's Adoration for its “seismic ambition” and exploration of cultural complexities.
The $15,000 CityTv Award for best Canadian first film went to Marie-Hélène Cousineau and Madeline Piujug for Before Tomorrow. Cousineau, who lives in Montreal but has travelled back and forth to Igoolik for the past 18 years, had high praise for her collaborator, Piujug, a 65-year-old Inuit woman who also co-starred in the film with her real-life grandson as the survivors of an illness that has destroyed their community.
The film is the third feature from the Nunavut-based Igloolik Isuma Productions ( Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen).
The best Canadian short film went to Chris Chong Chan Fui's Block B, with a special citation to Denis Villeneuve's Next Floor.
In other awards, the Diesel Discovery Award, voted by the festival's press corps of about 1,000 journalists, picked director Steve McQueen's Hunger, a harrowing look at the last days of Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands, who died in the Northern Ireland Maze prison in 1981.
The International Critics jury picked the American director Derick Martini's Lymelife as their top film from the Discovery program. The film, starring Rory Culkin and Alec Baldwin, is a coming-of-age story set in the late 1970s. In the Special Presentations category, the jury chose the Australian film Disgrace, based on the Booker prize-winning author J. M. Coetzee's novel about a South African professor (played by John Malkovich) who has a scandalous affair with a student.
In place of the usual invitation-only party, the festival held its wrap party for the public at Yonge-Dundas Square, following a free screening of the people's choice winning film at the Visa Screening Room at the Elgin Theatre.