Director Kevin McMahon has won the Toyota Earth Grand Prix at TIFF – the Tokyo International Film Festival.

The 23rd installment of the international fest wrapped yesterday with several awards, including one for McMahon’s 2009 doc Waterlife, a film about the sorry state of the Great Lakes.

“You have to take a film with a grain of salt,” McMahon told the Tokyo Reporter. “That is, it’s hard to judge a film. But the environment has all sorts of difficult and complicated issues, and I am glad that I was able to express a part of them through my film.”

Other films singled out for praise included Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s Sarah’s Key (a gala at the other TIFF this year) for Best Director; the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix went to Israeli director Nir Bergman for Intimate Grammar; and the Special Jury Prize for Postcard was won by Japanese director Kaneto Shindo.

The fest closed with was Ben Affleck’s The Town.