This article originally appears in the London Free Press on October 29, 2019 and is written by Joe Belanger.
A film about a film festival starring a London actor won the best feature film award at the fourth annual Forest City Film Festival.
Open For Submissions, a comedy about a small film festival with big problems, starring Tyler Parr, took the award over four other entries.
The five-day festival that celebrates films with connections (directors, producers, actors, crew, filming location) to Southwestern Ontario ended Sunday with the award presentations, including the coveted Old Oak audience choice award, which went to the feature documentary Prey, which also took home the award for best feature documentary.
Open for Submissions tells the story of new festival executive director Desmond Baggs who “must overcome sabotage and betrayal to make sure his film festival isn’t destroyed by the festival programmer, the filmmakers, and/or the Canadian Arts Council.”
“It was a real funny, delightful film, a fun look inside the film festival world, but I mostly liked it because it was a great showcase for local talent (Tyler Parr), who stars in it and is a delight as an actor,” said festival board chairperson Norm De Bono, a Free Press reporter.
“It was certainly worthy of the award.”
Prey is about a clergy sexual abuse survivor’s court battle with the Catholic Church. Prey includes London lawyer Rob Talach, who represented the victims of Father William Hodgson (Hod) Marshall, a retired priest and teacher who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing youths in Toronto, Sudbury and Windsor.
“I’m so happy Prey won both awards, it is powerful, moving and an important story everyone needs to hear and has such a strong local presence with a local lawyer,” said De Bono.
“It’s an important issue for people to continue to hear about.”
At Toronto’s Hot Docs festival earlier this year, Prey also won the $50,000 Rogers’ audience award for best Canadian documentary and the Director’s Guild of Canada special jury prize for Canadian feature documentary.
Other winning films included:
Best animation: iskwē — Little Star, about “the callous and racist way” the media covered the deaths of two Indigenous youth, 15-year-old Tina Fontaine in 2014 and 22-year-old Colten Boushie, in 2016.
Best screenplay: My Canadian Son by Windsor writer Theodore Bezair, a script about an estranged father’s efforts to reconnect with his son and learn about fathering in a cynical bid to land an important film role.
Best short documentary: Take Me to Prom, directed by Lucan native Andrew Moir, who went to high school in London, is about “Queer Canadians retelling a moment from their high school prom.”
Best short film: Christmas Green, which starred Stratford’s Sheila McCarthy, tells the story of “a disgruntled woman (who) pays an unwanted visit to her lonely neighbour but both end up finding unexpected joy in each other’s company.”
