2014 Toronto International Film Festival Winners: The Imitation Game Takes People’s Choice, Leads Oscar Race

The Weinstein Company’s big Oscar push The Imitation Game, from Morten Tyldum and starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, has won the People Choice at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, as many expected and predicted. The film made the biggest splash at the fest and is setting the cement for its strong awards season ahead. In the last six years, every winner of this award has gone onto an Oscar nomination for Best Picture and three have won (12 Years a Slave, The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire). St. Vincent, another Weinstein film, was the second runner up.

Full list of winners:

People’s Choice Award: The Imitation Game (Morten Tyldum)
1st runner up: Learning to Drive (Isabel Coixet) 
2nd runner up: St. Vincent (Theodore Melfi)

People’s Choice Award For Documentary: Beats of Antonov (Hajooj Kuka)
1st runner up: Seymour: An Introduction (Ethan Hawke)
2nd runner up: Do I Sound Gay? (David Thorpe)

People’s Choice Award For Midnight Madness: What We Do In Shadows (Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi)
1st runner up: Tusk (Kevin Smith)
2nd runner up: Big Game (Jalmari Helander)

Best Canadian Feature Film: Félix & Meira (Maxime Giroux)

City of Toronto Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film: Bang Bang Baby (Jeffrey St. Jules)

Prizes of the International Critics (FIPRESCI Prize) for Special Presentations Section: Time Out of Mind (Oren Moverman)

Prizes of the International Critics (FIPRESCI Prize) for Discovery Section: May Allah Bless France (Abd al Malik)

NETPAC Award For Best Asian Film: Margarita with a Straw (Shonali Bose)

Award For Best Canadian Short Film: The Weatherman and the Shadow Boxer (Randall Okita)

Award for Best International Short Film: A Single Body (Sotiris Dounkoous)

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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