tiff 2021 award winners

TIFF announces award winning movies for 2021

The TIFF award winning movies for 2021 have just been announced. After a strange yet often rewarding year at the Toronto International Film Festival, that saw buzz-worthy films previous festival winners and more play to local audiences and streaming audiences around the world, the closing night saw a list of movies garner awards attention.

Here are the list of winners from TIFF 2021.

People's Choice Award

This is the festival's top prize, one that often presages Oscar best-picture winners and nominees (Nomadland won last year). While it is fun to speculate what the likely winner will be, it only matters when the votes are counted and the prizes handed out.

This year's winner is Belfast by Kenneth Branagh, a rich and moving semi-autobiographical story of growing up in Northern Ireland during the troubles. Runners up include Jane Campion's Power of the Dog, and Toronto filmmakers Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson's moving film Scarborough.

The People's Choice documentary award went to E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's The Rescue about the extraordinary mission to save the children trapped in a Thai cave.

The People's Choice Midnight Madness award went to Palme d'or winner Titane

Platform Prize

The platform jury this year was headed by Riz Ahmed, and was joined by Clio Barnard, Anthony Chen, Valerie Complex and Kazik Radwanski.

The jury selected Kamila Andini's Yuni, the story of a young woman who wishes to attend university but the dream is being held back by a wedding proposal.

The international film critics group jury this year included Andrew Kendall, Esin Kücüktepepinar, Caspar Salmon, Toronto's Gilbert Seah and Teresa Vena.

They chose Anatolian Leopard, Emre Kayiş' film about a zookeeper that tries to hide the death of a prize captive from the authorities.

Netpac Award

This year's Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema jury members included Gemma Cubero del Barrio, Isabelle Glachant and Elhum Shakerifar. They gave their top prize toMouni Akl's Costa Brava, Lebanon.

Lead photo by

Scarborough movie


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