TIFF 2024 Will Celebrate Rising Actors Jharrel Jerome and Zhao Tao at This Year’s Tribute Awards

Kate Erbland
·2 min read

This year’s TIFF Tribute Awards are shaping up to be shiny indeed. Today, Toronto International Film Festival CEO Cameron Bailey has announced a pair of additional honorees who will be receiving TIFF Tribute Awards at this year’s festival. They include American award-winning (including recently picking up one of our own IndieWire Honors!) actor and rapper Jharrel Jerome, who will receive the TIFF Tribute Performer Award, and award-winning actor Zhao Tao, who will be presented with the TIFF Special Tribute Award.

Both actors have films at the festival this year: Jerome leads William Goldenberg’s fact-based “Unstoppable,” which will world premiere at TIFF, while Tao returns to the festival for the North American premiere of Jia Zhang-he’s “Caught by the Tides.”

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“From ‘Moonlight’ to ‘Unstoppable,’ Jharrel Jerome’s depth, strength, and vulnerability on screen have made him one of his generation’s finest actors. It’s an honor to recognize his outstanding body of work with the TIFF Tribute Performer Award,” said Bailey in an official statement. “In her collaborations with director Jia Zhang-ke, the TIFF Special Tribute honoree Zhao Tao has captured the complexity and significance of China’s galvanizing change. Hers is a signature face of our 21st century, and her work in ‘Caught by the Tides’ stands with her very best.”

Past recipients of the TIFF Tribute Performer Award are Colman Domingo and Vicky Krieps in 2023; Brendan Fraser and the ensemble cast of “My Policeman” in 2022; Jessica Chastain and Benedict Cumberbatch in 2021; Kate Winslet and Sir Anthony Hopkins in 2020; and Meryl Streep and Joaquin Phoenix in 2019. Previous recipients of the Special Tribute Award include Andy Lau in 2023, Dionne Warwick in 2021, and David Foster in 2019.

As was previously announced, at this year’s festival, “The Chair” alum Sandra Oh will serve as the inaugural Tribute Awards Honorary Chair of the fundraising gala, where Cate Blanchett, “Nightbitch” star Amy Adams, and director David Cronenberg will both be honored. Cronenberg will be recognized with the Norman Jewison Career Achievement Award. Also on tap for honors: filmmaker Mike Leigh, Canadian rising star Durga Chew-Bose, and French songwriting and composing duo Camille Dalmais and Clément Ducol. The awards ceremony will be held at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel.

The Tribute Awards gala is TIFF’s largest annual fundraiser. In 2024, proceeds from the awards will go towards TIFF’s Every Story Fund, which champions diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in film.

This year’s festival will run September 5 – September 15. You can check out all the festival’s recent announcements (and more to come) right here.

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