The top prize victor, musical comedy “La La Land” by American Damien Chazelle starring Ryan Ghosling and Emma Stone, which premiered at the Venice festival, has been a huge crowd puller in Toronto along with “Lion” and “Queen of Katwe”. The festival often serves as a launch pad for films and performances for the awards season.
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Starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, “La La Land” follows the two leads as their lives converge in poetic chaos while they try to make their respective dreams come true in the midst of a blossoming love affair.
La La Land has enjoyed rave reviews since premiering at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month.
The top award at the Toronto International Film Festival went Sunday to Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land”, a modern-day musical starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling that’s been the sensation of the fall film festival circuit.
The first runner-up was Garth Davis’ Lion, featuring Dev Patel, and the second runner-up was Mira Nair’s Queen of Katwe, starring Lupita Nyong’o.
“The King’s Speech”, “Slumdog Millionaire” and “12 Years A Slave” are among past winners of the award which have gone on to win Best Picture honours at the Academy Awards.
Stone plays Mia, a wide-eyed romantic who goes from audition to failed audition in her quest to make it big, while Gosling is Sebastian, a jazz pianist with a mission to save the medium, but who struggles to pay his bills.
The festival also has several jury prizes, one of which recognized Pablo Larraín’s “Jackie”, a biopic about Jacqueline Kennedy.
“Jackie” was the unanimous choice of a panel made up of filmmakers Brian De Palma and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, and acclaimed actor Zhang Ziyi.
There’s no question Toronto scored the largest number of potential awards films this year.
The City Of Toronto prize for Best Canadian First Feature, which carries a cash prize of $15,000, went to Johnny Ma’s Old Stone.
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The International Federation of Film Critics, meanwhile, gave its prize in the special presentations category to Feng Xiaogang’s “I Am Not Madame Bovary”, a look at a woman confronting the criminal justice system in China.
