‘American Fiction’ Wins Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award – Oscar Harbinger?
The People’s Choice Award from the just-wrapped 2023 Toronto Film Festival has gone to Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction. First Runner-Up is Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers. Second Runner-Up is Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron. The Documentary Award goes to Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe, and the Midnight Madness winner is Dicks: The Musical.
Orion and MRC’s American Fiction stars Jeffrey Wright and comes from writer-director Jefferson. It is a scathing satire on the publishing industry and its treatment of serious works by Black writers, one whose name is Thelonious “Monk” Ellison. He travels back to his hometown of Boston to attend a book festival, but the turnout is low in favor of another book seminar with author Sintara Golden’s (Issa Rae) bestseller We Lives in Da Ghetto. It is scheduled to be released in theaters in November.
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Voted by audience members since 1978 and often considered a harbinger for the Best Picture Oscar, the TIFF People’s Choice Award has been won by such eventual Best Picture Academy Award winners as Nomadland, Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, American Beauty and Chariots of Fire. Among those that went on to Best Picture nominations include last year’s winner The Fabelmans as well as Belfast, JoJo Rabbit, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Room, La La Land, The Imitation Game, Silver Linings Playbook, Precious, Life Is Beautiful, Places in the Heart and The Big Chill.
Here is a list of all the 2023 TIFF Award Winners:
SHORT CUTS AWARDS: |
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