Xavier Dolan’s Quinzaine title I Killed My Mother won the Canwest Award for Best Canadian Feature Film as the 28th Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) wrapped at the weekend.

The film, Canada’s selection for the foreign-language Academy Award, was one of 19 in competition. 

Among VIFF’s abundance of audience prizes, documentaries were most popular. The Rogers People’s Choice Award went to US film-maker Bill Guttentag for Soundtrack For A Revolution, a music-driven exploration of the US Civil Rights movement.

Meanwhile, the audience prize for documentaries, sponsored by the CBC’s specialty channel, documentary, went to Canadian film-maker Pete McCormack for Facing Ali, a film that views the famed boxer through the eyes of fighters who faced him in the ring.

US film-maker Dan Stone won the VIFF Environmental Film Audience Award for the documentary At The Edge Of The World. 

Film-makers Nimisha Mukerji and Philip Lyall took two audience prizes for their 65 Red Roses, capturing both the National Film Board Of Canada’s Most Popular Canadian Documentary Award and the VIFF Most Popular Canadian Film Award. Further, Mukerji and co-producer Gillian Lowry were recipients of the Women In Film & Television Vancouver Artistic Merit Award.

Directors Jan Binsse and David Tougas were named Most Promising Director Of A Canadian Short Film for The Last Act. As previously announced, the C$10,000 Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema went to South Korean film-maker Jang Kun-Jae for Eighteen. 

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