One of three Canuck directors — Denis Villeneuve, Benoit Pilon or Bruce McDonald — will be $10,000 richer after the Toronto Film Critics Association gathers on Jan. 12 for its awards dinner.

David Cronenberg will hand out the cheque for the Rogers best Canadian feature award at the 13th annual TFCA awards, to the helmer of Polytechnique, The Necessities of Life or Pontypool, respectively.

The TFCA’s other 11 winners were unveiled Wednesday morning and had Toronto’s critics divided over best film. The honor was split between the lesser-known British drama Hunger — director Steve McQueen’s study of the 1981 hunger strike at Ireland’s Maze prison — and Inglorious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino’s Nazi-hunting revenge fantasy. McQueen also nabbed best first feature.

‘There was no clear front-runner and we don’t really have a mechanism for a tie-breaking vote — we couldn’t do it democratically online,’ explained TFCA president and Maclean’s film critic Brian D. Johnson. The association cast its votes online this year. ‘It’s not the best-case scenario to be honest, but on the other hand, it’s an intriguing and original selection of winners,’ he added.

However, neither McQueen nor Tarantino garnered best director, which instead went to Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker, which was also the runner-up for best pic. Bigelow’s film also played well with critics’ associations in New York, L.A., San Francisco and Boston.

Nicolas Cage won best actor for his role as a drug-addled homicide cop in The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Carey Mulligan took best actress for her role as a London schoolgirl coming of age in the early 1960s in An Education.

The script category also produced a tie, this time between Basterds and Jason Reitman’s Up In the Air.

Anna Kendrick nabbed best supporting actress for her role as a corporate spitfire in the Reitman film, while Christoph Waltz garnered best supporting actor for his villainous turn in Basterds.

Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox received the best animated feature award and The Cove — Louie Psihoyos’ exposé of Japan’s dolphin slaughter — won the newly minted Allan King Documentary Award.

Palme d’Or winner The White Ribbon took the best foreign-language film award.

The 2009 TFCA Awards will be presented during a gala dinner in Toronto eatery on Jan. 12, hosted by Cameron Bailey, co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival.

That night the TFCA will also present the inaugural Jay Scott Prize for emerging talent, which carries a $5,000 cheque. ‘It’s kind of a newcomer award, and it’s not restricted to directors; it could be an actor,’ explains Johnson. ‘And it doesn’t have to be Canadian, but we will first look to Canadians as an unwritten rule.’

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