tiff awards

TIFF announces awards and People's Choice winner for 2023

The TIFF awards and People's Choice winner have been revealed as the Toronto International Film Festival celebrates the best of its 2023 selection.  

Recent past winners include Oscar Winners Nomadland and Parasite, while many other films have gone on to receive great critical and commercial success.

The Platform Prize is the main jury award, dolled out to a film of "high artistic merit that also demonstrate a strong directorial vision", focuses on a dozen or so titles that are making their first appearance here in Toronto.

The jury this year consisted of filmmakers Barry Jenkins, Nadine Labaki, and Anthony Shim, all of whom have seen grand success at this festival.

This year was a strange one, so time will tell if the titles awarded here will have quite the same level of impact.

Still, for any reservations about the current state of things, what's undeniable is that there were extraordinary films that played here worthy of celebration, and thanks to many packed houses and some of the most informed and enthusiastic audiences in the world, there's plenty to celebrate.

Here are the award winners for TIFF 2023.

People's Choice Award

American Fiction takes this top prize, with The Holdovers by Alexander Payne and Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron being the runner up titles.

The Midnight Madness award goes to Dicks: The Musical, and the documentary prize goes to Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make Believe

Platform Prize

This major jury prize goes to Dear Jassi by Tarsem Singh Dhandwar.

The Best Canadian Feature film

The 27 Canadian feature films in Official Selection are eligible for this award. The top prize goes to Sophie Depuis' drag drama Solo.

Fipresci Prize

This international film critic prize goes to couples’ therapy retreat film Seagrass by Canadian filmmaker Meredith Hama-Brown.

Shortcuts

Each winner for the best short film receives a a bursary of $10,000. The best overall short prize went to Electra by Daria Kashcheeva, the best Canadian prize goes to Motherland by Jasmin Mozaffari, and the Share Her Journey prize goes to Snake by Renee Zhan.

Canada Goose Amplify Voices Awards

Jurors for this best film by a BIPOC Canadian filmmaker, V.T. Nayani, Nisha Pahuja and Ricardo Acosta, awarded Kanaval by Henri Pardo for this prize. Tautuktavuk was selected as the best Canadian BIPOC first feature, and producer Damon D'Oliveira received the inaugural BIPOC trailblazer award.

Netpac Award

This year's jury for a selection that focuses on Asian cinema consisted of Sung moon, Haolun Shu, and Lalita Krishna. A Match by Jayant Digambar Somalkar takes home this prize.

The Changemaker Award

This award has a $10,000 prize for films focused on themes of social change and youth empowerment. The prize was awarded to We Grown Now by Minhal Baig.

Next year's festival runs from September 5-15, 2024. See you then!

Lead photo by

American Fiction


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