'12 Years a Slave' wins Toronto People's Choice Award

Apparently Toronto audiences agree that 12 Years a Slave is the one to watch this awards season: The Steve McQueen-directed film, starring Brad Pitt and Chiwetel Ejiofor, won the People’s Choice Award at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.

After seeing 12 Years in Toronto, EW film critic Owen Glieberman called it a “landmark of cruelty and transcendence,” while our awards expert Anthony Breznican declared Oscar nominations a “certainty.” The movie hits theaters Oct. 18.

Among the other TIFF awards:

• The People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award went to Sion Sono’s Why Don’t You Play in Hell?

• Jehane Noujaim won the People’s Choice Documentary Award for The Square.

• The Cory Monteith-starring All the Wrong Reasons won the Film Works Discovery Award for director Gia Milani.

• Walter Woodman and Patrick Cederberg won Best Canadian Short Film for Noah.

• Alan Zweig’s When Jews Were Funny won Best Canadian Feature Film.

• Shayne Ehman and Seth Scriver won Best Canadian First Feature Film for Asphalt Watches.

• Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida won Special Presentations from the international critics (FIPRESCI).

• Claudia Sainte-Luce’s The Amazing Catfish won the FIPRESCI jury prize for Discovery.

• Anup Singh’s Oissa won the NETPAC Award for World or International Asian Film Premiere.

• Christoph Rainer’s Requiem for a Robot won the Emerging Filmmakers Competition.