Montreal’s Festival du Nouveau Cinema, which wrapped on Sunday, awarded director Michael Rowe’s tale of a Mexican journalist who gets involved in S&M, Annee Bissextile (Ano Bisiesto), its top prize – the Louve D’Or – and selected Toronto-based filmmaker Ryan Redford’s film about war veterans, Oliver Sherman, as best Canadian feature.

At the awards ceremony at a downtown Montreal theatre Saturday night the FNC jury (made up of Marit Kapla, Loïc Magneron and Paul Richer) commended Redford for making a film which offers ”profound insights about humanity.”

Adapted from the Rachel Ingalls short story Veterans, Oliver Sherman (pictured) follows Sherman Oliver (Garret Dillahunt of Deadwood) a former soldier who struggles to put his life together seven years after being shot in the head.

Annee Bissextile is the first feature for Australian playwright Rowe, who co-wrote the script with Lucia Carreras. The Louve d’Or includes a $15,000 prize. The film also picked up the Camera d’Or prize for best first feature at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Quebec’s film critics association, the AQCC, awarded their prize for best film to Jo pour Jonathan, a story of two brothers set in the bleak Montreal suburb of Laval by director Maxime Giroux.

The top acting award in the feature film category was shared by Avtandil Tetradze for his part in Susa – a drama about a 12-year old boy in the ex-Soviet country of Georgia who survives by delivering illegal vodka – and Sibel Kekilli, who stars as an abused Turkish housewife who flees from Istanbul to Berlin with her 5-year-old son in the German film Die Fremde (When We Leave).

The Loup argente prize for best short film went to Divers in the Rain, a surrealist animation co-directed by Estonian filmmakers Olga and Priit Parn.

Quebecers Anne Emond (for Sophie Lavoie) and Louis-Philippe Eno (for Jonathan et Gabrielle) tied for the Grand Prix Focus award for best Canadian short film.

And the People’s Choice Award went to the feature film Confessions, Japanese director Tetsuya Nakashima’s Hitchcock-like revenge thriller.