Full list of 2006 Toronto Film Critics Awards

NEWS RELEASE

TORONTO FILM
CRITICS ASSOCIATION

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Toronto Film Critics Association announces awards for 2006

TORONTO - Stephen Frears' royal drama The Queen has been named Best Picture for 2006 by the Toronto Film Critics Association.

It beat out other nominees The Departed and United 93 for the honour.

The Queen, which chronicles the tumultuous events in the British royal household after the death of Princess Diana in 1997, dominated this year's awards.

In addition to Best Picture, it won three other awards outright and shared another for a total of five.

Helen Mirren [shown] won as Best Actress for playing the embattled Queen Elizabeth II.

Michael Sheen won as Best Supporting Actor for playing newly elected British prime minister Tony Blair.

Peter Morgan won the Best Screenplay Award for writing The Queen.

And Stephen Frears shared the Best Director prize in a tie with brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne for their drama L'Enfant.

Other key TFCA awards were distributed widely with Jennifer Baichwal's Manufactured Landscapes winning both as Best Documentary Feature and as Best Canadian Film.

It was the only film besides The Queen to be named in more than one category.

In the documentary category, Manufactured Landscapes beat out An Inconvenient Truth and Deliver Us From Evil.

In the Canadian film category, it beat out The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, Monkey Warfare and Six Figures.

In other categories, Sacha Baron Cohen won as Best Actor for his satirical role in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and Cate Blanchett won Best Supporting Actress for Notes On A Scandal.

George Miller's Happy Feet took the prize as Best Animated Feature, beating out Over the Hedge and A Scanner Darkly.

Jason Reitman's Thank You for Smoking was named the Best First Feature, beating out Brick and Little Miss Sunshine.

The Dardenne Brothers' L'Enfant won for best Foreign-Language Film, beating out Pan's Labyrinth and Volver.

In other TFCA news, documentary filmmaker Allan King has been named the winner of the Clyde Gilmour Award.

It goes annually to a Canadian who has enriched the understanding and appreciation of film in this country.

The Vancouver-born, Toronto-based King, who made his directorial debut 50 years ago with his ground-breaking documentary Skid Row(1956), remains active.

His latest effort, EMPz 4 Life, played in the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, appropriately in the Masters program.

In between, King directed landmark documentaries such as A Married Couple, Who's In Charge, Dying At Grace and Memory For Max, Claire, Ida and Company.

He also delved into fiction with his features Who Has Seen The Wind and Termini Station.

The Clyde Gilmour Award is named for the late film critic who helped to pioneer popular film criticism in this country.

The TFCA also wishes to pay tribute to the memory of journalist Sid Adilman (1937-2006) who worked tirelessly at the Toronto Telegram, the Toronto Star and other publications to focus attention on Canadian culture and Canadian talent in all media, from film to television, theatre and music.

The awards will be handed out at a private ceremony to be held in January 2007 in Toronto.

The complete list of winners follows, with Canadian distributors in parentheses:

BEST PICTURE

The Queen (Alliance Atlantis)

BEST PERFORMANCE, MALE

Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (20th Century Fox)

BEST PERFORMANCE, FEMALE

Helen Mirren, The Queen

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE, MALE

Michael Sheen, The Queen

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE, FEMALE

Cate Blanchett, Notes On A Scandal (Fox Searchlight)

BEST DIRECTOR (TIE)

Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, L'Enfant (Mongrel Media) and Stephen Frears, The Queen

BEST SCREENPLAY

Peter Morgan, The Queen

BEST CANADIAN FILM

Manufactured Landscapes, directed by Jennifer Baichwal (Mongrel Media)

BEST FIRST FEATURE

Thank You For Smoking, directed by Jason Reitman (Fox Searchlight)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Happy Feet, directed by George Miller (Warner Bros.)

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM

L'Enfant, directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Manufactured Landscapes, directed by Jennifer Baichwal

For more information on the Toronto Film Critics Assocation and awards go to:

TorontoFilmCritics.com


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