“I am here tonight to honor a man with really the best heart and worst laugh in Hollywood,” said Anna Kendrick Sunday night. She was presenting Seth
“I am here tonight to honor a man with really the best heart and worst laugh in Hollywood,” said Anna Kendrick Sunday night. She was presenting Seth Rogen with the final prize of the eighth annual Toronto Film Festival Tribute Awards, held at the Fairmont Royal York. The ceremony has grown since its inception in 2019, when Meryl Streep, Joaquin Phoenix (who won an Oscar the following year for Joker), and Taika Waititi (who also won an Oscar for Jojo Rabbit) served as inaugural honorees; this year it recognized 10 industry heavyweights, including Rogen, Isabelle Huppert, and Helen Mirren.
With more awards inevitably comes filler. But the program moved briskly, and the speeches ranged from heartfelt to amusing, if not both. The awards, acting as a fundraiser for the festival and presented with Rolex, are also one of the first stops on the awards season trail—and for recipients like Penélope Cruz and Possible Love director Lee Chang-dong, the event may have marked the first of many speeches from them on the long march to the Oscars.
Rogen ended the show forceful, with a speech that had the crowd laughing out raucous. “It is an honor to win this award,” Rogen said while accepting the Norman Jewison Career Achievement Award. “Although, if I’m being honest, it’s not a total shock. As soon as I heard there was an award with the word Jew in the title, I knew it was gonna come my way one day.”
Rogen also spoke about how a Canadian television program, The Drambuie Showcase Revue, introduced him to independent cinema—though the reason he watched it, he said, was “because this was before the internet, and if you wanted to see a woman naked, this is what you had to do.”
Director Lee, whose film Possible Love premiered at Venice and recently won that festival’s Grand Jury Prize, gave a surprisingly amusing speech after famed Korean actor Sul Kyung-gu presented him with his award. “Eight years ago I served on the platform jury here with director Béla Tarr,” he said. “At the time, Bela seemed to think that I was much younger than he was, while in fact I am a year older. I didn’t bother to correct him. I just pretended to be the younger filmmaker.” Lee also talked about taking time off between projects and how he was excited to be back in the director’s chair.
Three filmmakers presented Cruz with her award, but she thanked five in her speech, including los Javis, who directed La Bola Negra, and Florian Zeller, the director of Bunker. In her address, she thanked them as well as Olivia Wilde, expressing gratitude for being given the opportunity to do comedy in Wilde’s recent domestic dramedy, The Invite. Cruz indicated that she had one more filmmaker to thank before prompting the audience: “Are you guessing who the other director is?” The answer was clear. “Thank you, Pedro Almodóvar,” she said. “You are really present in all of my decisions and everything I do in my life.” Cruz attended the awards with her husband, Javier Bardem, with whom she costars in Bunker.
