The top prize at the 40th Toronto International Film Festival went to Lenny Abrahamson's Room, an emotional drama about a captive mother and her 5-year-old son.
The film – which was adapted from Emma Donoghue’s 2010 novel and stars Brie Larson and 8-year-old Jacob Tremblay – took the festival’s People’s Choice award, which is decided by audience voting. It’s told from the perspective of a boy who has been locked in a room with his mother for his entire life.
The audience award at Toronto is often an indicator of awards-season success. Past winners include 12 Years a Slave and The King's Speech. The Room is due to go on general release in the United States on October 16.
The runner-up prize went to Tom McCarthy's Spotlight, a newspaper drama, starring Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo, about The Boston Globe's investigative reporting on sexual abuse by Catholic priests.
The prize in the festival's inaugural Platform sidebar of international films went to Alan Zweig's Hurt, a documentary about Canadian cancer hero Steve Fonyo. Evgeny Afieneevsky's Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom won the People's Choice documentary award.
The audience award for the Midnight Madness section went to Ilya Naishuller's Hardcore, a kinetic Russian action movie shot on GoPro cameras in the style of a first-person-shooter video game.
Its US$10 million (Dh36m) sale to STX Entertainment was the largest single purchase at the festival. The Toronto International Film Festival ended on Sunday after 10 days of red- carpet premières.
