Endless Cookie is the winner of the Rogers Best Canadian Documentary award from the Toronto Film Critics Association. win award was announced tonight at the annual TFCA Awards Gala at the Omni King Edward Hotel in Toronto, hosted by actress Tamara Podemski. Endless Cookie scores a cash prize of $50,000, courtesy of Rogers, with the award.
Directed by half-brothers Seth Scriver and Pete Scriver, the animated documentary offers a riotous and offbeat feat of storytelling as the siblings—one white and one Indigenous—collaborate as Seth sets out to record Pete’s stories. Along the way, Pete’s rambling tales take plenty of digressions and find just as many interruptions as family members and neighbours enter the scene and make some noise, all of which Seth keeps in the final track. The audio interviews serve as the basis for Seth’s eclectic animation that vividly and humorously accentuates the divergent nature of Pete’s yarns. Seth was on hand to collect the prize, along with Pete’s son Chris.
Endless Cookie also won the TFCA’s Best Animated Feature prize back in December, marking the first time that a film has won both honours. The film is now streaming on Crave.
Meanwhile, the two runners-up for the Rogers Best Canadian Documentary Award—Ghosts of the Sea, directed by Virginia Tangvald, and Who Killed the Montreal Expos?, directed by Jean-François Poisson—receive cash prizes of $5,000, courtesy of Rogers.
Also announced at the gala was Blue Heron as the winner of the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award. The drama directed by Sophy Romvari sees a fateful summer through the eyes of an eight-year-old girl as her troubled brother acts out in ways that will forever shape their Hungarian-Canadian family. Blue Heron also won Best First Feature for Romvari in the TFCA’s main slate of previously announced awards and the film continues her deeply personal blurring of the lines between fiction and non-fiction. It opens in Toronto at the Fox Theatre on March 28 and expands to more theatres in April.
Runners up for Rogers Best Canadian Film also receive cash prizes of $5,000. Those films are Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, directed by Matt Johnson, and The Shrouds, directed by David Cronenberg.
“Both of this year’s Rogers Prize-winning films speak so eloquently to our present moment,” said Robin Mirsky, executive director of the Rogers Group of Funds, in a release. “Blue Heron addresses the timeless subjects of immigration, belonging, family, memory, and the ache of love in such a timely way. And Endless Cookie layers urgent ideas about isolation, addiction, colonialism and economic disparity under great warmth, humour and originality. Both are about searching for home – specifically, searching for home in Canada – and we’re proud to celebrate them, along with all the nominees.”
“Our six Rogers nominees this year are about as different from one another as six films could be,” added TFCA Johanna Schneller. “That is thrilling to me, because it shows the remarkable range of talent in this country. But I’m delighted to single out Endless Cookie and Blue Heron. You couldn’t possibly distill either film into a tidy elevator pitch — they’re each too wonderfully singular for that. But they do have this in common: They both take you on an unforgettable journey, though neither takes you where you think it will.”
Other honours at the TFCA gala included the presentation of the Company 3 Luminary Award to documentary filmmaker and Films We Like co-founder Ron Mann (Clairtone). As part of the prize, Mann gets to pick an emerging filmmaker to receive $50,000 in services from Company 3. Mann’s “pay it forward” selection is filmmaker Jacquelyn Mills (Geographies of Solitude).
The TFCA gala included thank you videos from most of the night’s winners, including Ryan White, whose film Come See Me in the Good Light scored the Allan King Documentary Award. Also sending thanks via video were Best International Feature winner Oliver Laxe, director of Sirāt, actors Nina Hoss (Hedda), Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You), Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon), Benicio del Toro (One Battle After Another), Joan Chen (Montreal, My Beautiful), and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (Sweet Angel Baby), while Paul Thomas Anderson sent a note of thanks, as his crime dramedy One Battle After Another led the field with four wins including Best Picture.
