Payal Kapadia’s debut feature documentary A Night Of Knowing Nothing continues to rack up the honours. The film won the Amplify Voices award at the 46th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada yesterday.
“We’d also like to thank all our friends, who’ve been such an important part of this film and who’ve really contributed to it a lot. Without whom this film would not have been possible.” —Payal Kapadia #TIFF21 pic.twitter.com/lXopMNRMXp
— TIFF (@TIFF_NET) September 19, 2021
Kapadia shared the award with Khadar Ayderus Ahmed's Somali film The Gravedigger’s Wife. The filmmaker and Ranabir Das, her producer-cinematographer-editor, also shared a short video thanking the festival, the selection committee and the jury.
“We would also like to thank all our friends who have been such an important part of this film and who have really contributed to it a lot. And without whom this film would not have been possible," Kapadia said, also thanking the film's French producers Thomas Hakim and Julien Graff.
Last year, Chaitanya Tamhane’s The Disciple (2021) had shared the same award at the 45th edition.
The hybrid film in Hindi and Bengali, which was screened in the Wavelengths section, was called 'a fever dream of impossible love tied to a broader reflection on contemporary India' on the TIFF website.
The write-up by Andréa Picard further said, 'Structured around letters from an unseen protagonist, L, directed to her estranged lover, K, Kapadia’s film is at once grand and contained, weaving fragments of a romance and moments of domestic life with handheld documentary footage captured around the country over several years.'
A Night Of Knowing Nothing also won the Oeil d'Or, the grand prize for Best Documentary, at the Cannes Festival in July, where it had its world premiere.
Meanwhile, Kenneth Branagh’s black-and-white drama Belfast won the TIFF People’s Choice award, cementing its status as an Oscar frontrunner next year. Julia Ducournau's Palme d'Or winner Titane won the People's Choice Midnight Madness award.
Jessica Chastain and Benedict Cumberbatch were honoured with the TIFF Tribute Actor awards for their performances in The Eyes Of Tammy Faye (2021) and The Power Of The Dog / The Electrical Life Of Louis Wain (2021), respectively.
Dune (2021) director Denis Villeneuve received the TIFF Ebert Director award, after the late award-winning film critic Roger Ebert. Singer Dionne Warwick, whose documentary Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over was screened at the festival, received a Special Tribute award as well.