2014 TIFF CAST Awards Announcement

Posted on September 22, 2014 by James McNally
UPDATE (September 23, 2014): Due to an oversight, one ballot that was submitted on time wasn’t tabulated. I’ve adjusted the results accordingly, and there have been some changes to the Top 10. My apologies for the inconvenience.
I’d like to dedicate this edition of the CAST Awards to our friend Peter Chu (@pchu1234), who passed away in June. His favourite film from last year’s TIFF was Gravity and his Twitter avatar was the poster image from The Tree of Life and I don’t think I can add anything to that.

For the third year in a row, I’ve compiled a special edition of the CAST Awards, just based on what people saw during the Toronto International Film Festival. Here are the CAST Top 10 based on the votes of 29 submitted ballots. Voters ranked up to 10 films on their ballot from top to bottom, with first choices receiving 10 points, second choices 9, etc. The Points column lists the total score for each film, Mentions indicates how many voters included it in their Top Ten, Average is the average point score, and Firsts shows how many voters chose it as their favourite TIFF film.

In the case of points ties, the film with the higher number of first-place votes is listed first, then by highest average score. Because our sample size is quite small, these “rankings” don’t actually mean much, but I thought it would give a good idea of what this particular group of festivalgoers enjoyed this year. I’m curious to see how many of these show up in our regular year-end CAST ballot and how they do.

Nightcrawler - Tony Gilroy
The Look of Silence - Joshua OppenheimerWhiplash - Damian Chazelle
Mommy - Xavier DolanThe Duke of Burgundy - Peter StricklandClouds of Sils Maria - Olivier Assayas
What We Do in the Shadows - Taika WaititiForce Majeure - Ruben OstlundTop Five - Chris RockThe Guest - Adam Wingard

FILM TITLE
POINTS
MENTIONS
AVERAGE
 FIRSTS
1. Nightcrawler 69 9 7.67 2
2. The Look of Silence 52 6 8.67 4
3. Whiplash 50 6 8.33 0
4. Mommy 49 5 9.8 4
5. The Duke of Burgundy 49 7 7.0 2
6. Clouds of Sils Maria 49 7 7.0 1
7. What We Do in the Shadows 41 7 5.86 1
8. Force Majeure 40 6 6.67 1
9. Top Five 37 5 7.4 1
10. The Guest 36 9 4.0 0

Participants:

Here is a PDF with each person’s ballot and the full collated results, with a few more interesting stats included.

And for those still reading, here is my final TIFF CAST ballot. There are only 7 films because that’s all I was able to see this year:

My TIFF CAST Ballot

  1. The Look of Silence
  2. Mommy
  3. Clouds of Sils Maria
  4. Behavior
  5. 1001 Grams
  6. Natural Resistance
  7. National Diploma
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