Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans wins Toronto festival top prize
US director Steven Spielberg on Sunday won the most coveted award at the 2022 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), while an Indo-Canadian director and a counterpart from India won in categories promoting diversity in cinema.
Spielberg made his debut appearance at TIFF with the world premiere of his latest project The Fabelmans. It ended up capturing the People's Choice Award.
The filmmaker behind Jaws, Indiana Jones, ET and Schindler's List among many other celebrated productions brought his "most personal film yet," according to a description from TIFF.
"The Fabelmans finds the director reflecting on the experiences that made him the filmmaker we know and love, in a story based on his childhood in Arizona," programmer Jane Schoettle noted.
This particular award is considered a tastemaker in the industry for the next Academy Awards.
Meanwhile, Indo-Canadian director Nisha Pahuja, won Amplify Voices Award for Best Canadian Feature Film with her documentary To Kill A Tiger. Born in New Delhi and raised in Toronto, Pahuja's film tracks the harrowing journey of a family in Jharkhand to bring to justice the culprits in a sexual assault on a teenaged girl.