Best Picture Watch: ’12 Years A Slave’ Wins Highest Award At Toronto Film Festival, Academy Award To Follow?

The Toronto Filmfest has recently concluded with "12 Years A Slave" garnering the highest award. Is an Oscar Award looming in the movie's future.

The movie '12 Years A Slave' won the People's Choice award Award at the recently concluded Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The winner is decided by the audience and is considered as the festival's highest award. This latest achievement has further heightened the Oscar Buzz.

Directed by Steve McQueen, "12 Years A Slave" is based on the autobiography of Solomon Northup. The title role is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor who also generated Oscar buzz of his own for Best Actor. A Best Supporting Actor nomination for Michael Fassbender is also in the offing. Fassbender and McQueen had previously worked together in his Noir film "Shame."

The TIFF has been somewhat of an oracle for future Oscar winners. Indeed, The audience-based award success rate in its 35 year-history has been, with almost every one of its honorees eventually getting some Academy recognition. Collectively, they have accounted for 113 Oscar nominations, 11 of those for Best Picture - the most recent one was Silver Linings Playbook last year -- and it also featured nine movies nominated for best foreign language film. Forty of those 113 nominations resulted in Oscar wins, and it had four best picture winners (Chariots of Fire, American Beauty, Slumdog Millionaire and The King's Speech).  

Expectations are high for the movie which was co-produced by Brad Pitt, who also has a role in the film. It will start its US theater run in October 18.