Toronto Film Critics Association Awards

December 13, 2010: The Social Network, David Fincher’s incisive drama about the tangled creation of Facebook, dominated the 2010 awards of the Toronto Film Critics Association, winning five awards including Best Picture and Best Director.

Jesse Eisenberg was named Best Actor for his performance as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, while his co-star Armie Hammer took Best Supporting Actor for his dual role as Zuckerberg’s well-bred nemeses, the Winklevoss twins.  Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s book “The Accidental Billionaires” won the Best Screenplay prize.

“In our final discussions Sunday afternoon, again and again The Social Network galvanized broad support from our members,” said TFCA President Brian D. Johnson, film critic for Maclean’s. “There was a strong sentiment that we’re not just recognizing a superbly crafted ‘movie of the moment’ that spins a creation myth of cyber-capitalism. We appreciate what it represents in popular American film culture—an intelligent moral drama told from multiple viewpoints with a complex protagonist who is neither hero nor villain.”

More details of the 14th annual TFCA awards, which were announced today:

Jennifer Lawrence was named Best Actress for her breakout role as a young woman who challenges her Ozark Mountains community to look for her missing father in Winter’s Bone, while newcomer Hailee Steinfeld took Best Supporting Actress for her debut performance in True Grit as an 1870s teenager avenging her father’s murder.

Exit Through the Gift Shop, an inventive puzzle of a documentary about street art directed by the artist known as Banksy, won the Best First Feature prize in addition to the Allan King Documentary Award.

DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon received the Best Animated Feature award, while Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives – a runner-up for Best Picture – was named Best Foreign-Language Film.

“As we ended up championing a remarkable diversity of styles,” said Johnson, “there was much discussion about what these films mean about where cinema is headed—whether it be the immersive magic realism of Uncle Boonmee, the ruthless neo-realism of Winter’s Bone, or the subversive mischief of Exit Through the Gift Shop.”

The 2010 TFCA Awards will be presented at a gala dinner at Toronto’s Nota Bene restaurant on January 12, 2011, hosted by Cameron Bailey, co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival. There the TFCA will also name the winner of the Rogers Best Canadian Feature Award, which carries a $15,000 cash prize. The three pictures nominated are: Incendies, directed by Denis Villeneuve, winner of last year’s Canadian Feature award for Polytechnique; Splice, directed by Vincenzo Natali, and Trigger, directed by Bruce McDonald.

In addition, the TFCA voted a special citation recognizing Bruce McDonald for a banner year. He made four features in 2010: This Movie is Broken, Trigger, Music from the Big House, and Hard Core Logo 2.

The TFCA will also present the second annual Jay Scott Prize for emerging talent, which carries a $5,000 prize. This year it will go to Toronto writer-director Daniel Cockburn, whose wildly original feature debut, a wry cosmic puzzle called You Are Here, has been winning raves on the festival circuit. The TFCA will also inaugurate the Deluxe Student Film Award, which gives $3,000 in post-production services to a student filmmaker. The winner will be chosen by TFCA members voting on shorts submitted by film departments at Humber College, Ryerson University, Sheridan College and York University.  The result will be announced at the awards dinner.

Please note: under the TFCA’s guidelines, contenders eligible for the awards include films released in Canada in 2010 plus films that qualify for the 2010 Oscars and have Canadian distribution scheduled by the end of February 2011.