TIFF announces its 2025 Awards and Juries
TIFF is delighted to reveal the 2025 award categories, jury members, and prizes that will honour the year’s most exceptional works. The juries, composed of renowned film critics and filmmakers, will evaluate films for prestigious honours including the two Canadian feature film awards, the FIPRESCI Prize from the International Federation of Film Critics, and the NETPAC Award from the Network for the Promotion of Asian Pacific Cinema. All prizes will be presented during an in-person awards ceremony that will also be livestreamed at 10 am ET at TIFF Lightbox on Sunday, September 14, the last day of the Festival. The 50th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, presented by Rogers, runs September 4–14, 2025.
Awards descriptions including eligibility can be found here: tiff.net/awards
2025 Jury for Best Canadian Feature Film & Best Canadian Discovery Awards.The Best Canadian Discovery Award celebrates works of emerging filmmakers who contribute to enriching the Canadian film landscape. All Canadian first or second feature films in Official Selection are eligible for this award. The winner will receive a cash prize of $10,000. Last year’s winner was Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language.
The Best Canadian Feature Film Award honours the unique craft and storytelling in Canadian cinema. All Canadian feature films in Official Selection — excluding first or second features — will be considered for the award. The winning filmmaker will receive a $10,000 cash prize. Last year’s prize went to Sophie Deraspe’s Shepherds.
Jennifer Baichwal has been directing and producing documentaries for nearly three decades. Among other films, installations, and lens-based projects, she has made 10 feature documentaries including the Festival Official Selections Manufactured Landscapes (Best Canadian Feature Film, TIFF ’06); Long Time Running (Gala Presentations, TIFF ’17); and ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch (Canada’s Top Ten, TIFF ’18).
Sophie Jarvis is a Swiss-Canadian filmmaker whose feature debut Until Branches Bend (TIFF ’22) won the Prix de Soleure at the Solothurner Filmtage, the Netflix Breakthrough Award at the Athena Film Festival, and Best BC Film at VIFF. It also received a CSA nomination for Best Original Screenplay in 2023.
R.T. Thorne is a prolific triple threat: director, screenwriter, and producer. His television work has garnered multiple Canadian Screen Awards and an Emmy nomination. His critically acclaimed feature debut, (TIFF ’24), starring Danielle Deadwyler, is a Canada’s Top Ten honouree. The film had its North American theatrical release this summer.The is presented by an international jury selected by the International Federation of Film Critics. Founded in 1925, the Federation awards the prize at international film festivals to promote film art and to encourage new and young cinema. The FIPRESCI Jury will award the Prize of International Critics, dedicated to emerging filmmakers, to a debut feature film having its World Premiere in TIFF’s Discovery programme. studied history and cultural studies at Humboldt University in Berlin. Since 1993, she has been working as a freelance journalist for television stations, daily newspapers, monthly magazines, and trade papers. Her areas of expertise include film policy and the film industry. She was one of the founding members of the Professional Association of German Media Journalists, of which she is a board member. is a journalist and film critic born in Lisbon. He graduated as a mechanical engineer from the Technical University of Lisbon, where he began programming for the film club. His collaborations have appeared in a number of books, texts published by film festival catalogues and international film magazines such as (France), (USA), (Canada), and (Spain). He has been working as a film critic for the Portuguese press since 1998. has been a film journalist since 1982 and a member of the French Union of Film Critics. He has contributed to French publications such as , , and . Host of the blog Persona Grata, he has also written biographies of Woody Allen, Cyril Collard, James Dean, Jacques Tati, Bernard Blier, and Jean Rochefort. is a film journalist based in Melbourne, Australia where he is also the senior editorial producer at . Andy is a regular contributor to , , , and . He is also a voting member of the Golden Globes and host of . is the screen editor at and the programmer of the Underground Section at the Fantasia International Film Festival. She’s written for BFI, , , and . She is currently working on her first book.
