After one heck of a Toronto International Film Festival, which CraveOnline covered with dozens of movie reviews, celebrity interviews and videos, the time finally came to pick the official winners this weekend. Topping the list was The Imitation Game, Morten Tyldum’s biopic about computer genius Alan Turing, who helped win World War II by decrypting the Nazis’ “Enigma Code” but who was later persecuted by his own government for being a homosexual. The Imitation Game won the People’s Choice Award at TIFF 2014, with Isabel Coixet’s Learning to Drive and Ted Melfi’s St. Vincent taking the 2nd and 3rd runner-up spots, respectively.
Related: Screenwriter Graham Moore Talks ‘The Imitation Game’
The People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award, bestowed upon films in the horror and/or action genre, went to What We Do in the Shadows, a vampire comedy starring “Flight of the Conchords” co-creator Jemaine Clement, which also played at this year’s Sundance and SXSW Film Festivals. Runners up in the category included Kevin Smith’s transformational horror movie Tusk (in theaters this Friday) and Jalmari Helander’s Big Game, which stars Samuel L. Jackson as the President of the United States, on the run from terrorists in the Finnish countryside, with only a 13-year-old boy to protect him.
Related: Samuel L. Jackson Introduces ‘Big Game’ at TIFF (Video)
In the People’s Choice Documentary category, Hajooj Kuka’s Beats of the Antonov, about Sudanese workers trying to survive their government’s bombing campaign, took home the top honors. Runners up included David Thorpe’s Do I Sound Gay? and Ethan Hawke’s Seymour: An Introduction, about the life classical pianist Seymour Bernstein.
Outside of the People’s Choice categories, Time Out of Mind, directed by Oren Moverman and starring Richard Gere, won the FIPRESCI Award, voted upon by a jury of 23 international film critics. The film stars Gere as a newly homeless man attempting to reconnect with his estranged daughter, played by Jena Malone.
CraveOnline extends our congratulations to the winners and bids everyone at TIFF a fond farewell until next year, when we shall return in force!
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
