Meditation Park and The Wife win this year’s TIFF Film Circuit People’s Choice Awards

July 3, 2019

The people have spoken: Meditation Park and The Wife win this year’s TIFF Film Circuit People’s Choice Awards

TIFF Film Circuit communities celebrate 25 years of uniting the country through film with two stories of powerful women

TIFF Film Circuit enthusiasts from coast to coast (to coast) have screened the films, met the special guests, and made their selections for this year’s TIFF Film Circuit People’s Choice Awards. TIFF Film Circuit, the organization’s national film outreach programme, brings the best in Canadian and international cinema to communities across Canada that wouldn’t otherwise have access to them. This year, of all the films shown to over 150 communities across the country, audiences bestowed high honours on Mina Shum’s Meditation Park, which was voted Favourite Canadian Film, and Björn Runge’s The Wife, which was voted Favourite International Film.

Over the last 25 years, TIFF Film Circuit has held over 41,000 events, facilitated more than 1500 guest visits, and reached over 6.4 million attendees. Some of last year’s most exciting guests included director and TIFF Share Her Journey ambassador Jennifer Baichwal (ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch); real-life “Grizzlies” Kyle Aviak, Russ Sheppard, and Dave Little (The Grizzlies); and professor Malini Guha and writer Sarah-Tai Black on the importance of Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight.

Winner: Favourite Canadian FIlm

Meditation Park

Meditation Park (2017)
dir. Mina Shum

Mina Shum directs an all-star cast — including Cheng Pei Pei, Sandra Oh, Tzi Ma, and Don McKellar — in her latest feature, about a devoted wife and mother (Pei Pei) who is forced to reassess her reverence for her husband after she finds another woman’s thong in his laundry.

Winner: Favourite International Film

The Wife

The Wife (2018)
dir. Björn Runge

Jonathan Pryce, Glenn Close, and Christian Slater star in Björn Runge’s adaptation of Meg Wolitzer’s bestselling novel about a woman (Close) who decides to leave her author husband (Pryce) on the eve of his Nobel Prize presentation in order to finally pursue her own writing aspirations.

In celebration of these last 25 years of connecting communities through film, TIFF is looking to engage 2,500 new film lovers in 2020, to find out more about this initiative, visit tiff.net/ocanada.