(December 14, 2015 – Toronto, ON) – The Toronto Film Critics Association (TFCA) has named the 1950s melodrama Carol as its choice for Best Picture adding a Best Director award to the film’s count for Todd Haynes. Costars, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara (pictured), were runners-up for this year’s Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress prizes, respectively.
The TFCA named Tom Hardy Best Actor for the second consecutive year for his dual role as homicidal twin crime lords Reggie and Ronnie Kray in Brian Helgeland’s Legend; he’d won the 2014 award for holding the screen all by his lonesome in Steven Knight’s solo drama Locke.
And Joshua Oppenheimer, who won the Allan King Documentary Award in 2013 for The Act of Killing, won the 2015 prize for its companion piece, The Look of Silence, which revisits the Indonesian genocide from the perspective of an optometrist confronting his brother’s murderers.
The awards were voted on by the TFCA at a meeting held on Sunday, December 13, 2015. The membership also chose the three finalists for the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award: The Forbidden Room, directed by Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson; My Internship In Canada, directed by Philippe Falardeau, and Sleeping Giant, directed by Andrew Cividino. The winner will be named at the TFCA’s awards gala, to be held January 5, 2016.
The winner of the Stella Artois Jay Scott Prize for an emerging artist, to be announced at a later date, will be presented with a $5,000 cheque at the gala.
At the January 5 ceremony, the TFCA will also announce the winner of the Manulife Student Film Award, which carries a $5,000 cash prize. It will be presented to a short film that the critics select from student entries submitted by film programs at Humber College, Ryerson University, Sheridan College and York University.
As previously announced, the 2015 recipient of the Technicolor Clyde Gilmour Award is Deepa Mehta, who will present a filmmaker of her choice with $50,000 worth of services from Technicolor at the January 5 gala.
The 2015 TFCA Awards will be hosted by Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director of the Toronto International Film Festival. There the TFCA will also reveal the winner of the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award, which carries a record-setting $100,000 cash prize, the richest film award in the country. The runners-up will each receive $5,000.
“This year’s winning films encompass a remarkable diversity of genres and styles,” said TFCA President Brian D. Johnson. “And the Canadian finalists present a broad spectrum of talent — a veteran Winnipeg auteur who remixes cinema like a mad alchemist, an Oscar-honoured Quebecois who’s made a bold turn from intimate drama to sly political satire, and a young Toronto director making his feature debut with a Lakehead coming-of-age story that dazzled Cannes and TIFF.”
