TFCA Announces Awards & Nominations
Staff Editors
(December 18, 2023 – Toronto, ON) The Toronto Film Critics Association met yesterday, in what one member called a “record three-and-a-half hours of debate.” This was the 27th annual awards, although we’ll have to wait until the new year to learn which Canadian films will move forward from yesterday’s nominations. Who won?
Jonathan Glazer’s, The Zone of Interest – about the comfortable lives of the family of an Auschwitz commandant – took two top prizes. The Cannes-winning film won Best Picture and Best Director for Glazer.
To create a contemporary reflection of inclusivity, the TFCA eliminated gender-based acting categories for 2023. Two Outstanding Lead Performance winners and two Outstanding Supporting Performance winners were chosen by vote, without regard to gender.
The TFCA chose Lily Gladstone as an Outstanding Lead Performance winner for her role as an oil-rich member of the Osage Nation whose family members die suspiciously, in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Sandra Hüller also won Outstanding Lead Performance for her role in Justine Triet’s French courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, as a mother accused of killing her husband.
For its two Outstanding Supporting Performance winners, the TFCA chose Ryan Gosling for his role as Ken in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph for Alexander Payne’s movie The Holdovers.
Expanding its recognition of Canada’s national cinema, the TFCA created a new category, Outstanding Performance in a Canadian Film. That award went to Glenn Howerton for his portrayal of Research in Motion CEO Jim Balsillie in Blackberry. As well, Teyana Taylor won the Breakthrough Performance award for her work as a single mother in Harlem in A.V Rockwell’s A Thousand and One.
The TFCA also split the award for screenplay into two categories, Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon were the inaugural winners, respectively.
Rye Lane, a British romantic comedy about two lovelorn strangers who forge a relationship over the course of a day, was awarded Best First Feature for director Raine Allen-Miller.
These awards will be presented on on Monday, March 4, 2024, along with the prestigious Rogers Best Canadian Film and Rogers Best Canadian Documentary, at a gala held at Toronto’s Omni King Edward Hotel, hosted by acclaimed Canadian actress Amanda Brugel (Orphan Black, The Handmaid’s Tale).
To be more reflective of the current Canadian filmmaking industry, Rogers has split their $100,000 award fund into two, $50,000 prizes: Rogers Best Canadian Film and Rogers Best Canadian Documentary.
The finalists chosen for the two $50,000 Rogers awards are Blackberry, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person and SOLO for Best Canadian Film, and Rojek, Someone Lives Here and Swan Song for Best Canadian Documentary. The two runners up in each category will receive $5,000.
Best International Film went to Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves, a sardonic love story about a supermarket worker and an alcoholic labourer who bond over their love of movies.
20 Days in Mariupol, a documentary compiled by journalists trapped in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol in the early days of the war, was awarded the Allan King Documentary Film Award. Pablo Berger’s Robot Dreams, a comic-book-based animated fantasy about a dog and a robot in 1980’s New York, was named Best Animated Feature.
Three significant TFCA awards are yet to be announced. They include the 2023 Company 3 Luminary Award, which recognizes a Canadian industry figure who has made a substantial and outstanding contribution to the advancement and/or history of Canadian cinema. A pay-it-forward prize, the Company 3 Luminary Award comes with $50,000 of post-production services from Company 3, offered to the filmmaker of the prize-winner’s choosing.
The Stella Artois Jay Scott Prize for an emerging artist is a $10,000 award, sponsored by Labatt, named for the late, prestigious Globe & Mail critic, who famously championed young film talent. Also to be announced: the Telefilm Canada Emerging Critic Award, which carries a prize of $1,000.
The TFCA is extremely grateful to founding sponsor Rogers Communications for the Rogers Best Canadian Film and Rogers Best Canadian Documentary awards, and for its continuing commitment to Canadian film, in the form of two of the country’s largest arts prizes.
Under the TFCA’s rules, eligible contenders for the awards include films released in theatres or streaming in Toronto in 2020 as well as films that qualify for the 2023 Academy Awards and have a Toronto release scheduled by the end of March 2024.
SOURCE: TFCA Toronto Film Critics Association.
