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Toronto Film Critics Association names "Nomadland" best picture of 2020

TORONTO — The Toronto Film Critics Association has given "Nomadland" three of its top awards, including best picture of 2020.
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TORONTO — The Toronto Film Critics Association has given "Nomadland" three of its top awards, including best picture of 2020.

The organization also named Chloé Zhao best director and Frances McDormand best actress for the touching drama, about a community of nomads living in vans in the American west.

The TFCA announced the winners of the 24th annual awards via Twitter Sunday, and will hold a virtual gala live on YouTube on March 9.

The virtual gala will announce the winner of the Rogers $100,000 Best Canadian Film Award from a field of three finalists.

The finalists are Louise Archambault's "And the Birds Rained Down," "Anne at 13,000 Ft." by Kazik Radwanski, and "White Lie" by Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas.

Runners-up will each receive $5,000.

Eligible contenders for this year's TFCA awards include films that were released in theatres or streamed in Toronto in 2020, as well as films that qualify for the 2020 Academy Awards and have a Toronto release scheduled by the end of March 2021.

Other winners announced Sunday include Riz Ahmed as best actor for playing a drummer who loses his hearing in "Sound of Metal."

Maria Bakalova got best supporting actress for playing the daughter of the Kazakhstani journalist protagonist in the mockumentary "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm."

Daniel Kaluuya took best supporting actor for playing Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in "Judas and the Black Messiah."

Lee Isaac Chung won best screenplay for the Korean-American family farming drama "Minari."

And Radha Blank’s comedy "The Forty-Year Old Version," about a playwright who becomes a hip-hop artist, took best first feature. 

Nabbing best international film was the Brazilian genre-blurring thriller "Bacurau," while the Allan King Documentary Film Award went to "Collective," about journalists investigating a deadly night-club fire in Romania.

"Wolfwalkers" took best animated feature. 

Indigenous producer Jason Ryle is the 2021 recipient of the Clyde Gilmour Award, which recognizes a Canadian industry figure "who has made a substantial and outstanding contribution to the advancement and/or history of Canadian cinema."

Kelly Fyffe-Marshall, whose short film "Black Bodies" just screened at the Sundance Film Festival, is the winner of the Jay Scott Prize for an emerging artist. 

And a tie vote resulted in co-winners for the Cineplex Entertainment Emerging Critic Award: Mark Hanson and Rose Ho.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 8, 2021.

The Canadian Press