Film
Hot Docs announces this year's award winners
Last night at the Isabel Bader theatre, Hot Docs handed out its annual awards - and over $50,000 in prizes. It pays to be a documentarian these days.
Best Canadian Feature went to Bryan Friedman's The Bodybuilder and I, about the director's relationship with his lawyer-turned-bodybuilder father, while a special jury prize was given to Serge Giguère's Driven By Dreams.
Best International Feature went to Losers and Winners from Germany, about a smelting plant that gets disassembled and transplanted from Germany to China. The Special Jury Prize in this category went to American Michael Skolnik for Without the King, a look at growing political unrest in Swaziland.
Best Short went to Arturo Cabanas' Man Up, a devilish look at a father who uses belittlement and abuse to turn his son into a soldier.
In an appealing reversal of TIFF's tendency of giving the "audience" award before the actual audience has finished seeing all of the films, Hot Docs' audience award will be presented on Monday. So keep ripping those tickets!
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In fact, when I asked the director about portraying the people in the movie in different lights through choosing what to include in his film, he said that he realized that it would be easy to villainize the father, which is something he did not want to do. He also stated that after talking to the father, he found himself agreeing with several of his arguments about giving back to one's country.