Platform jury’s statement: “To The Victory! is the unanimous choice for this year’s Platform Award amongst a very strong selection. Bringing cinematic language to its roots and, at the same time, masterfully playing with audience expectations, this film dismantles convention to reveal deeply resonant universal emotions. Director Valentyn Vasyanovych has choreographed a mise-en-scène rendered with masterful precision, arriving at the kind of refined simplicity that can only be achieved with artistic maturity and bold vision. He has deftly used comedy to address a very complicated and complex situation into a work that is both audacious and profoundly beautiful. Ultimately, the film returns us to the very essence of cinema — reminding us why we are compelled to tell stories on film, and why we continue to do so.”
Unlike many other film festivals, TIFF is renowned for giving audiences the most powerful voice. This year was no exception. The People’s Choice Award presented by Rogers went to Hamnet by Chloé Zhao. In the international category, Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice took the top prize, while Barry Avrich’s The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue won Best Documentary, and Matt Johnson’s Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie triumphed in the Midnight Madness section.
Here are the winners from the 21 films in the main competition, as decided by a jury chaired by American director Alexander Payne:
Three other films (minority-) co-produced by France will also be shown in Competition, including the new film by Joachim Lafosse, Six Days in Spring.Out of Competition, Juliette Binoche has been invited to present her first feature film, In-I in Motion, to the public. The film focuses on the choreographic creation “In-I,” in which she participated alongside Akram Khan in 2007.
