"Jojo Rabbit" is a comic satire about a 10-year-old German boy
Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) during the World War Two, who finds
out his mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a young Jewish
girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic and turns for help to
his imaginary friend Adolph Hitler (Waititi).
Last week, Waititi was awarded the Toronto International Film
Festival's new Ebert Director Award, with the festival's co-head
Cameron Bailey hailing his "razor-sharp humor, faultless style
and boundless generosity."
Among the most popular films by the half-Maori, half-Jewish
director is "Thor: Ragnarok," a 2017 superhero film based on the
Marvel Comics character Thor. He is also known for "Boy" and
"Hunt for the Wilderpeople."
In the past 20 years, the Grolsch People's Choice Award winner,
selected based on voting by audiences at the Toronto festival,
has gone on to win the Oscar for best picture five times --
"Green Book" last year, "12 Years a Slave," "The King's Speech,"
"Slumdog Millionaire" and "American Beauty."
[to top of second column] |
Two Toronto runner-ups, "Spotlight" and "Argo," have also won Oscars
during that time and Toronto award winners have been nominated for
best picture Oscars in all but one of the past 10 years.
The prize offers C$15,000 in cash and a custom award. The runners-up
are Noah Baumbach's "Marriage Story" and Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite."
Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia's "The Platform" won the festival's Midnight
Madness genre film award, and the documentary award went to Feras
Fayyad's "The Cave."
(Reporting by Nichola Saminather; Editing by Sandra Maler)
[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|