Calgary International Film Festival audience members have spoken, and true stories of Canadian icons have topped the list of the 2025 Audience Choice Awards.
Documentaries John Candy: I Like Me, The Pitch, Bif Naked, and Singhs in the Ring, along with Canadian comedy Racewalkers, enthralled audiences.
New American comedy The Baltimorons and UK family flick Grow—featuring Dominic McLaughlin, who was selected to play Harry Potter in the HBO series—also took home audience choice awards.
Brenda Lieberman, lead programmer for the Calgary International Film Festival, said that she was happy with the audience selections for awards this year, owing to a lot of the programmers’ favourites also being on that list.
“A lot of the ones that we’re definitely close to the programming team, but ones that we envisioned would resonate really well with the audience,” she said.
“For quite a few of us, a lot of those films just stood out, and they did with the audience. So, even with Racewalkers, I just went going into it thinking this is going to be such a crowd-pleasing film, like, I would be surprised if it didn’t hit with our crowd. And sure enough, it did.”
She said that this year, the biggest wildcard win for her was Grow, given that there were just a handful of UK films in the festival.
“I thought it would be a very crowd-pleasing film and super accessible film, and we wanted to market something that was for kids, suitable for kids, but also that adults could enjoy. And it’s such a cute, sweet story,” said Lieberman.
“It was a really pleasant surprise to see that it won the Audience Choice Award. The entire contemporary world cinema lineup was incredible this year. There was such amazing films and lots of crowd-pleasing films too from all over the world, but it’s great to know that the cute family story took the spot.”
The effect of audiences taking the time to rank their favourite films at the festival, said Lieberman, also works to help those same films make it into other festivals and to reach more audiences.
She said the awards help to raise the profile of films amongst programmers and film distributors.
“Knowing what clicks with an audience is is always an incredible feeling for a filmmaking team, because at the end of the day whether it’s a jury award, an audience award, or no award, just being an official selection of a festival everyone’s making these films to have an opportunity to be seen with an audience and to experience the emotions, the laughter, the crying, the, freaking out, whatever it is,” said Lieberman.
“These are what filmmakers are, truly, a lot of them making their work for. And the experience for so many of the films in the festival was so bang on and so great that any filmmaker who is in attendance should feel and had experience that should feel really good about it. There’s less and less opportunity for all these incredible independent films doing all the film festivals, not just Calgary, but around the world.”
