TIFF 2019: Jojo Rabbit, it's the people's choice

Jojo Rabbit from Taika Waititi won the People's Choice Award at 44^th Toronto International Film Festival.

The delicate tonal satire of Hitler Youth won the festival's most prestigious public award, considered by the industry as a springboard for the nomination of an Oscar for the best shots. Peter Farrelly's Green Paper, honored last year, was the eighth winner of the People's Choice Award to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.

The finalists for the award were Noah Baumbach's devastating drama, Marriage Story, and comedy for Bong Joon-ho's class, Parasite. The three films will open in Toronto later this fall.

Unlike previous TIFF awards announcements, this year's winners were published on social media and in an email to reporters rather than at an awards ceremony. (Efficient, I suppose, but that does not allow more than short comments via the Twitter video of the filmmakers, and their voices are always the best part of these things.)

Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia's brutal social allegory The platform has been designated as the People's Choice for Midnight Madness, with Andrew Patterson's The Vast Of Night and Jeff Barnaby's Blood Quantum as first and second finalists. The film was chosen by Feras Fayyad's The People, The Cave, with Garin Hovannisian's I am not Alone and Bryce Dallas Howard's fathers in first and second place.

In the Canadian Awards, Sophie Deraspe's Antigone, which transposes Sophocles' tragedy into current Montreal, won the Best Canadian Feature Film Award, priced at $ 20,000. Surrealist alternate of Matthew Rankin, The Twentieth Century, won the $ 15,000 from the City of Toronto. Award for Best Canadian Feature Film. Both films will be released in Toronto later this year.

Delphine de Chloé Robichaud won the IWC's $ 10,000 Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Short Film, while the IWC's Short Cuts $ 10,000 Short Best Award was awarded to the Swiss Short Film Production. Lasse Linder, All Cats Are Gray In The Dark. Finally, the NETPAC award was awarded to 1982 by Oualid Mouaness (the winners of this year's platform and FIPRESCI were announced earlier in the week.)

As is customary, the festival closes the festival today (Sunday, September 15) with free screenings of the three winners of the choice of candidates, with entry on a first-come, first-served basis. The platform will be screened at 3:15 pm in the TIFF Bell Lightbox 3, while The Cave will be screened at 3:30 pm in the TIFF Bell Lightbox 2.

And Jojo Rabbit will air on the five screens of the TIFF Bell Lightbox, with offbeat start times starting at 5:45 pm. It's going to be wild.

@nowtoronto | @normwilner