The documentary Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe by Robert McCallum, the coming-of-age tale Solo from director Sophie Dupuis and the family drama Seagrass by Meredith Hama-Brown were among the prize-winning Canadian films at the 48th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
Produced by Mark Bishop, Aeschylus Poulos and Matthew Hornburg and directed by McCallum, the Amazon Original Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe won the People’s Choice Documentary Award at the awards ceremony held on Sunday (Sept. 17). The first runner-up for that award was another Canadian doc, Summer Qamp, directed by Jen Markowitz and produced by Tanya Blake.
The award for Best Canadian Feature Film went to Dupuis’ Solo, produced by Étienne Hensez and the prodco Bravo Charlie, a drama set in Montreal’s drag scene.
“Sophie Dupuis’s Solo is a specifically intimate and deeply affecting film, full of palpable care and honesty,” said the TIFF jury in a statement. “Whatever your entry point to this film, there is a place for you as part of a larger story and conversation, which is more critical than ever. This coming-of-age narrative is ultimately a film about family, both blood and chosen, and the complications and beauties of both. And it is a story of love, in all of its iterations, of how it can both fail us and set us free.”
Receiving an honorable mention in the Best Canadian Feature Film category was Canada-Luxembourg copro Kanaval (Yzanakio, Wady Films) from director Henri Pardo, which also won the Amplify Voices Award for Best BIPOC Canadian Feature.
“There has never been a Canadian film that captures both magical realism and post-colonial trauma in such a beautiful, poetic, and convincing way,” said the jury of Kanaval. “Centered around the powerful and awe-inducing performance of newcomer Rayan Dieudonné, this film is an honest ode to the immigrant experience.”
Winning the FIPRESCI international critics award was the drama Seagrass, the feature debut of director Hama-Brown and produced by Tyler Hagan of Experimental Forest Films and Sara Blake of Ceroma Films. Said the jury: “This intimate, endearing, and wonderfully framed first feature film by young Canadian actor and director Meredith Hama-Brown skillfully deals with subjects like masculinity, family taboos, motherhood, and structural anti-Asian racism.”
The Amplify Voices Award for Best BIPOC Canadian First Feature Award went to Tautuktavuk (What We See), from directors Carol Kunnuk and Lucy Tulugarjuk. The film, about two siblings attempting to overcome trauma during the pandemic, was produced by Tulugarjuk and Jonathan Frantz and comes from Kingulliit Productions.
“Through powerful self-representation, this story honours rituals that have been and rituals that are made anew, reflecting a rare purity in its filmmaking approach,” said the jury in a statement. “The makers of this film powerfully capture truth in its most unadorned form, turning the camera inward to both look at and listen to themselves and their community, placing trust in and honouring the authenticity of their voices.”
Receiving the 2023 Amplify Voices Trailblazer Award was Damon D’Oliveira, co-founder of Toronto prodco Conquering Lion Pictures. He was recognized for his work as a producer and executive producer of Canada’s “most critically and commercially successful” films and TV series, including Brother, Rude, The Grizzlies, The Book of Negroes and Wildhood, as well as his endeavours to champion diversity, equity, and inclusion both in front and behind the camera.
In the short film category, the Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Film went to Motherland from director Jasmin Mozaffari, about an Iranian-American man in 1979. “Displaying great mastery of craft, this incredibly ambitious film excels in its direction, performances, sound, and picture, with every frame exhibiting love and intention. The film left us with one word collectively: wow,” said the jury of Mozaffari’s film.
Elsewhere, the TIFF 2023 People’s Choice Award — considered a forerunner for Academy Award contention — went to director Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, an adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, a satire about the commodification of marginalized voices. The first runner-up in the category was The Holdovers by Alexander Payne, with legendary Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron as the second runner up.
Photo courtesy of TIFF