| Alexander Sokurov was awarded in Canada The Toronto Film Forum is usually called the festival of festivals: it is not competitive and invites to its program many films that have already been shown at other festivals and have received recognition from audiences and professionals. And yet, the non-competition status does not in the least hinder the fact that every year the list of prizes stretches over two pages of dense text. And North American premieres in Toronto are no less important than festival victories in the Old World, as they allow distributors to judge how much a particular arthouse new product will collect in the US and Canada.
The most prestigious of Toronto's awards is the Discovery Film Prize, established by the Volkswagen Group. The winner, chosen by a vote of critics accredited at the festival, was “The Magdalene Sisters” by Scotsman Peter Mullan. This is the second award in the past two weeks: most recently, “Sisters” was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Nobody expected such sensational success from Mullan, better known as an actor (he played the lead role in My Name is Joe by Ken Loach). And his picture, for all its dramatic quality and touching performance by the young actresses, does not seem original. But the anti-clerical pathos of the film (it talks about the monstrous treatment of girls who ended up in Irish Catholic shelters for “sinners”) unexpectedly came in handy. At the press conference, Mullan put the hard-hearted clerics on the same level as the Taliban. The Vatican was not slow to substitute itself, calling the Venetian awarding of “The Magdalene Sisters” a “vicious provocation,” and intellectuals with a rich “leftist” past remembered their youth and unanimously defended the film.
In general, it seems that in the festival world they are missing pictures with a clear and tough social and ideological position, controversial and furious films that can cause not only the admiration of a sophisticated audience, but also public resonance. This is precisely what was confirmed by the recent Venice Film Festival, where prizes were given to films with a message, while the stylistically impeccable Dolls by Takeshi Kitano was pointedly ignored.
Now about other prizes of the XXVII Toronto Film Festival. Only one circumstance prevented fans of Alexander Nikolaevich Sokurov from proclaiming “Russian Ark” an undisputed masterpiece and the master’s best film - a cool reception at festivals. Now this obstacle has been removed. It didn’t work in Cannes, but it worked in Canada: an hour and a half excursion into Russian history and culture, filmed in one shot, won the Independent Film Channel Visions Award from the Canadian television channel, which came with a considerable sum of 20 thousand dollars. Let us also note that Toronto criticism turned out to be much more favorable than Cannes - in a number of publications, “The Ark” was called a technical miracle and a real masterpiece.
Another loser of this year's Cannes competition, Spider by Canadian David Cronenberg, also received his due. The story of a mentally ill man (perfectly played by Ralph Fiennes) trapped in a false memory was named Best Canadian Film (a prize sponsored by the City of Toronto that comes with a check for $25,000). “Any film that goes beyond the mainstream, any Spidey that is not Spider-Man, needs help and support,” Cronenberg so elegantly expressed his gratitude, while not failing to go through Hollywood blockbusters.
And finally, the Audience Award went to the New Zealand film “Riding a Whale”, and the FIPRESCI Prize went to the French film “Along the Dry Rivers”. Alexey MEDVEDEV |
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