Oscar frontrunner ’12 Years a Slave’ wins BlackBerry People’s Choice Award for best picture at TIFF 2013

Critics were already hailing it as an Oscar frontrunner. On Sunday, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave received the blessing of Toronto International Film Festival audiences when it was awarded the BlackBerry People’s Choice Award, http://arts.nationalpost.com reports.

Past winners, includingThe King’s Speech in 2010 and Slumdog Millionaire in 2008, have gone on to win the Academy Award for best picture.

The film, based on the true story of a freeman in 1840s New York who is kidnapped and sold into slavery in the U.S. South, is also widely expected to earn a best-director nomination for McQueen, and best-actor consideration for Chiwetel Ejiofor in the role of Solomon Northup. The runners up in the category were Philomena, directed by Stephen Frears, and Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners.

The People’s Choice award in the documentary category went to Jehane Noujaim’s The Square, about the recent unrest in Egypt. Noujain dedicated his prize to filmmaker John Greyson and Dr. Tarek Loubani, two Canadians whose imprisonment in Egypt became a cause célèbre at TIFF this year.

In the Midnight Madness program, the People’s Choice was Why Don’t You Play in Hell?, a film from Japanese cult director Sion Sono, about a yakuza feud that collides with a budding filmmaker’s plans.