With 137 accredited critics and journalists voting, Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” topped the categories of Best Movie and Best Director. Kemp Powers’ adaptation of his own play, “One Night in Miami,” scored the most votes for Best Screenplay, while Vanessa Kirby dominated the Best Performance category for her performance as a young mother struggling with the traumatic outcome of her pregnancy in “Pieces of a Woman.” The Wuhan coronavirus portrait “76 Days” won Best Documentary.
Much of the survey results reflect the hype that has come out of the festival circuit in recent weeks. The Searchlight-produced “Nomadland,” which stars Frances McDormand as a woman roaming the midwest in an RV, won both the Golden Lion at Venice and the TIFF audience award in the past two weeks. Those prizes tend to indicate awards season momentum — in 2019, they went to “Joker” and “Jojo Rabbit,” respectively — as does our critics survey, which awarded future Academy Award winner for Best Picture “Parasite” in 2019, and future Best Picture nominee “Roma” the year before that. Searchlight has slated “Nomadland,” which next plays as the centerpiece of NYFF, to open in early December. Kirby’s win for “Pieces of a Woman” also reflects recent festival buzz, as she won Best Actress at Venice for her dramatic turn in the movie, the first English-language effort from Hungary’s Kornel Mundruczó. Netflix acquired the film ahead of its TIFF premiere and is expected to plan an awards push for Kirby as Best Actress. Meanwhile, although this year’s TIFF opened with a documentary — Spike Lee’s filmed version of David Byrne’s Broadway hit “American Utopia” — the Best Documentary winner of this year’s survey was something of a surprise. One of the first feature-length projects completed during the coronavirus pandemic, “76 Days” reveals the daily struggles inside four Wuhan hospitals. The documentary, credited to directors Hao Wu and Weixi Chen as well as a third anonymous director, is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
As usual, the winners in each category only provide a starting point for exploring the highlights of this year’s TIFF lineup. Read on for the finalists in each category, with links to more coverage. BEST MOVIE Based on a ranked top three list.
