“12 Years a Slave” took the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, confirming its position as the leader in Oscar’s Best Picture race. Some 11 previous winners of this prize (like last year’s “Silver Linings Playbook”) have received Best Picture nominations, with four of them, including “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The King’s Speech,” going on to win the top Oscar.
Inspired by the true story of a free Northern black man who is kidnapped and sold into slavery in pre-Civil War Alabama, “12 Years” was already considered the front-runner before winning this bellwether award because of early rave reviews highly praising the film, director Steve McQueen and star Chiwetel Ejiofor. It opens in limited release on Oct. 18.
Toronto does not give out juried awards like many festivals, so the audience award carries tremendous weight. The runners up for the prize were Stephen Frears’s “Philomena,” starring Judi Dench as a woman trying to track down a son she gave up for adoption many years earlier, due for release on Christmas Day; and Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners,” a kidnap revenge thriller with Hugh Jackman and Jake Glyllenhaal.
Festival-goers casting ballots preferred them to several other high-profile Oscar hopefuls, including Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity” space opera starring Sandra Bullock, and John Wells’ “August:: Osage County,” a stage adaptation headlined by Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts.
Sion Sono’s “Why Don’t You Play In Hell?” took the audience award for the festival’s Midnight Madness section, while Jehane Noujaim’s “The Square” won the audience award for documentaries.