Review of TIFF 2019: critics rank the best films and performances

Some films launch their season of awards at the Toronto International Film Festival; others use it to gain speed. On the last day of this year's TIFF, the coveted People's Choice Award was awarded to Taika Waititi's "Jojo Rabbit" a week after its creation. However, IndieWire's annual Tiff Critics Survey on the festival's best films and performances tells a different story by singling out a film that has been praised for months.

Bong Joon-ho's film "Parasite" won the Best Film Award, for the first time in several years that the winner of the survey is not a film launched on the autumn festival circuit. Meanwhile, Noah Baumbach's "Marriage Story" has dominated the categories of Best Screenplay and Best Performance for Adam Driver. "Collective", a Romanian documentary that has not yet been distributed in North America, dominated the Best Documentary category.

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The victory of "Parasite" is the latest achievement in the life of a film that continues to find new fans. The winner of the Korean author's Palme d'Or, which tells the story of a family of scammers who double a wealthy household, also surpassed the Cannes Critics' poll conducted by IndieWire earlier this year . Bong also dominated the category of best director and is in the top five of the best screenplay.

With 322 critics and other accredited TIFF journalists from around the world voting in the survey, the result is the latest sign of strong support for "Parasite" as the film grows this fall.

Already a box office hit in Korea, "Parasite" at the upcoming New York Film Festival and theatrically in North America on October 11th via Neon. The distributor relies on the filmmaker's long-standing reverence and his success here is a key factor in his burgeoning rewards campaign, which is based on the film's expectations for major Oscar categories beyond the best international film (although many expect it – there, where no Korean film has even been nominated before).

Positioning "Parasite" at the top of the IndieWire Critics Survey – despite the many more recent titles released at this year's TIFF – is the latest evidence of widespread support for Bong and the complex black comedy that he built. However, the critics are not Oscars prognosticators, and their favorites do not predict the momentum of a rewards season champion.

For the second year in a row, survey results were divergent from TIFF's Choice Award: Last year, when this award was given to the future winner of the best film, Green Book, the winner of the IndieWire Critics poll Survey was "Roma". With Cuarón "Roma", who finally won three Oscars, is another acclaimed foreign language title that has garnered critical support for the stature of the trophy season, but did not win the award for best film. (In 2017, the winner of the poll was "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," who also won the People's Choice Award.)

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The Nazi satire of Waititi "Jojo" is not totally absent from the investigation. The film ranks well among the festival's five best narrative features, just behind Noah Baumbach's "Marriage Story" saga, another major release of the fall that heads for NYFF in its centerpiece. The drama produced by Netflix is ​​the only fall entry to be broadcast in the four major fall festivals – Venice, Telluride, TIFF and NYFF – and its successes in the Best Screenplay and Best Performance categories are correlated with the buzz he has received at each of his festival so far. The other best-performing finalists talk about all the performances that sparked enthusiasm at TIFF this year: from JAquin Phoenix's super-nasty jerk in "Joker" to Jennifer Lopez as a stripper in "Hustlers" .

As usual, the movies at the top of each category tell only part of the story. Other major TIFF titles that have received significant support include Rian Johnson's "Knives Out" and Trey Shults' family drama "Waves."

None of the categories, however, speak more about the specificity of this survey than that of the best documentary. This is where "Collective", the director Alexander Nanau, took the lead role of several journalists when he denounces a conspiracy in the field of health. The film was screened in Venice and found many supporters at TIFF, but continues to search for a cast, making it an unlikely candidate for rewards in a field filled with non-fictional entries. Nevertheless, "Collective" is exactly the kind of festival discovery that critics like to defend. It has also made its way into the memo to IndieWire distributors, which is part of this year's festival. In the poll, the film arrived just before "Varda By Agnes", the master class collection that marks the latest achievement credit of the French legend of the new wave, Agnes Varda, and the Syrian war thriller "The Cave ", from National Geographic, which opened the TIFF Docs section.

Check out the complete list of the best movies in each category below.

Best narrative film

Based on a 3-ranked ranking.

1. "Parasite" (10% of total votes and 17% of first place votes)

2. "Wedding history" (9% of the total votes and 13% of the votes in the first place)

3. "Jojo Rabbit" (6% of total votes and 8% of first place votes)

4. "Knives Out" (6% of total votes and 6% of first place votes)

5. "Joker" (5% of total votes and 5% of first place votes)

These 5 first represent alone 36% of all votes and 49% of votes in the first place, all other narrative films are part of the programming for the rest.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM

Based on a top 3 ranked.

1. "Collective" (5% of total votes and 12% of first place votes)

2. "Varda by Agnes" (5% of total votes and 8% of first place votes)

3. "The Cave" (4% of total votes and 8% of first place votes)

4. "The Kingmaker" (4% of total votes and 7% of first place votes)

5. "Western Stars" (4% of total votes and 5% of first place votes)

BEST FILM REALIZED (NARRATIVE OR ELEMENT)

Only one vote was cast for this section – the percentages indicate the total amount of votes received by each film.

1. "Parasite", Bong Joon Ho (15.72%)

2. "Joker", Todd Phillips (7.23%)

3. "Waves," Trey Edward Shults (6.92%)

4. "A beautiful day in the neighborhood", Marielle Heller (6.6%)

5. "Wedding story", Noah Baumbach (6.29%)

Best scenario

Only one vote was cast for this section – the percentages indicate the total amount of votes received by each film.

1. "Wedding history" (20.57%)

2. "Knives out" (14.87%)

3. "parasite" (9.81%)

4. "Jojo Rabbit" (8,86%)

5. "The two popes" (4.11%)

BEST PERFORMANCE

Based on the written votes.

1. Adam Driver, "Wedding Story"

2. Joaquin Phoenix, "Joker"

3. Adam Sandler, "Uncut gems"

4. Jennifer Lopez, "Hustlers"

5. Tom Hanks, "A beautiful day in the neighborhood"

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