OFFA / Mark Zelenski
Back in full swing, the 2023 Oakville Film Festival brought over 100 films to Oakville last month in a festival that spanned four cinemas and virtual viewers across Canada.
Now, the full list of award winners have been revealed.
Most of Oakville Festivals of Film and Art's (OFFA) juried prizes for the 10th Annual Oakville Film Festival were awarded at the festival's Awards Brunch back on June 25, 2023, though the audience choice award winners were just announced last week in early July to allow voting to finish.
The record-breaking Canadian biography film Blackberry, telling the story of Waterloo tech company Research in Motion, came out as this year's big winner with four awards.
Of the international films, U.K.'s coming of age comedy Scrapper took home the most prizes with three in total.
Last week's audience choice announcement marks the official end to OFFA's annual film festival, with this being the second year of renewed in-person film screenings after going digital in 2020 and 2021.
Executive director Wendy Donnan says for this year's seven person jury, choosing the winners was "a really difficult decision. The jury painstakingly worked to watch over 100 films to choose this year's winners."
Awards were presented in ten categories; eligible for varying prizes were the 81 shorts and 22 feature films that brought the list of titles at this year's event over 100 for the first time.
Below is a list of winners for the seven juried prizes and two audience choice awards.
Best Canadian Feature or Documentary: Blackberry
Best International Feature or Documentary: Scrapper
Best Canadian Director: Matt Johnson for Blackberry
Best International Director: Charlotte Regan for Scrapper
Best Indigenous Film: The Beehive, dir. Alexander Lasheras
Best Canadian Short Film: Demon Box, dir. Sean Wainsteam
Best International Short Film: Eleven Twelve, dir. Cyril Masson
Best Student Film: Through the Attic's Eye, dir. Lily Zhang
Audience Choice Award (Best Feature): Blackberry, dir. Matt Johnson
Audience Choice Award (Best Short Film): Little Bird, dir. Tee Schneider
In addition to the nine award winners above, four performers across the feature films were recognized with honourable mentions for their performances, seen below. (The festival does not present acting awards.)
- Jay Baruchel as Mike Lazaridis in Blackberry
- Lola Campbell as Georgie in Scrapper
- Laurie Gagné as Anna in Notre-Dame de Moncton
- Michael Spears as Fred in The Year of the Dog
A full video recording of June's awards ceremony is available on YouTube, with speeches from some of the winners.
More details and information on the awards for the 10th annual Oakville Film Festival is available on their website.
