BC films Seagrass and Satan Wants You receive honours at Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards
BlackBerry, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, and To Kill a Tiger also receive nods for best in Canadian film
Seagrass.
Vancouver filmmakers Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams receive their awards. Photo courtesy Sean Horlor
Meredith Hama-Brown received her award for directing Seagrass by video.
BRITISH COLUMBIA-MADE FAMILY drama Seagrass took home two top provincial prizes at last night’s annual Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards. Meredith Hama-Brown was named Best BC Director and Seagrass was named Best BC Film of 2023.
The ceremony took place last night at the VIFF Centre theatre.
Seagrass, which tells the story of a Japanese-Canadian woman grappling with the death of her mother and a disintegrating marriage, was shot in Tofino and on Gabriola Island with atmospheric touches and narrative daring. “This is a very nostalgic film,” Hama-Brown told Stir for its Fall Arts Magazine last year. Its young star Nyha Huang Breitkreuz also won a prize for Best Supporting Female Actor. Seagrass played at VIFF last year, and at TIFF, it was selected for the auspicious Discovery series for promising emerging directors. Seagrass will open in theatres across the U.S. and launches across Canada on February 23 (playing at Fifth Avenue Cinemas locally).
Meanwhile, Satan Wants You by Vancouver filmmakers Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams took top prize for Best Canadian Documentary. Years in the making, the compelling stranger-than-fiction film traces the Satanic panic that overtook North America in the 1980s to Victoria, B.C. It debuted at DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver last year. When Stir reviewed it there, we praised it as “a portrait of a deeply troubled woman and a fame-hungry doctor—and most of all, a bracing warning about the power of suggestion and the dangers of mass deception.”
Stylish teen-bloodsucker Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person also received nods in the Canadian categories. Its director Ariane Louis-Seize received the TELEFILM-Canada One to Watch award, while its star Sara Montpetit won Best Female Actor. Both appeared by video from Quebec to receive their awards for the film that recently debuted at Visions Ouest’s Tournée du Quebec program here.
The winner of the most Canadian prizes, however, was the celebrated comedy BlackBerry, the fictionalized retelling of the rise and fall of the trailblazing Canadian start-up, taking home prizes for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Male Actor, and Supporting Male Actor.
Meanwhile, in the Critics Circle’s international categories, the Canadian NFB film To Kill a Tiger took honours as top documentary of 2023. In the harrowing nonfiction film, Indian farmer Ranjit fights for justice for his 13-year-old daughter, the victim of a brutal gang rape. The documentary is streamable for free here. Director Nisha Pahuja sent a video acceptance of the prize; she was at an Academy Award Luncheon as the documentary is also up for an Oscar.
Oppenheimer and The Holdovers received two recognitions each. The morally-charged French court drama Anatomy of a Fall took the Best Picture recognition at the Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards, at the same ceremony. The star of the film, Sandra Hüller, won the Best Female Actor category.
Its full list of awards are below:
BEST PICTURE: Anatomy of a Fall
BEST DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
BEST SCREENPLAY: Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach, Barbie
BEST MALE ACTOR: Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
BEST FEMALE ACTOR: Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall
BEST SUPPORTING MALE ACTOR: Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE ACTOR: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The HoldoversBEST DOCUMENTARY: To Kill a Tiger
BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM IN A NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE: The Zone of Interest
The Vancouver Film Critics Circle is made up of film writers across the city’s media.
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