'Room' Gets Award Season Boost, Wins TIFF's People's Choice Award

There are few festival awards that have much actual bearing on the awards season, but TIFF's People's Choice Award has for years been a key augur of which films could be major players on the road to Oscar. Past winners include "The King's Speech," "The Imitation Game," "12 Years a Slave," and "Slumdog Millionaire," and this year the coveted trophy went to a movie that certainly got a lot of talk around Toronto. READ MORE: The 20 Most Anticipated Films Of The Toronto International Film Festival TIFF announced that Lenny Abrahamson's "Room" won the People's Choice Award. The moving drama starring Brie Larson is based on the acclaimed novel by Emma Donoghue and tells the harrowing story of a young woman and her son, held captive in the titular room, who plot an escape to freedom. It's one of the movies that was a big highlight for me at the fest, and given the chatter I'd heard, this win isn't a big surprise (particularly when many of...