'Attack the Block' Takes Fantasia Audience Award

TORONTO – The Fantasia International Film Festival wrapped Sunday, with British writer-director Joe Cornish’s London-set alien invasion movie Attack the Block taking the top audience award for best European or American feature.

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The Screen Gems sci-fi horror film from Adventures of Tintin co-writer Cornish earlier won the 2011 SXSW Film Festival audience award.

Other Fantasia audience award winners in Montreal include a tie for the best Asian feature, shared by two Japanese films, Takashi Miike’s The 13 Assassins and Sion Sono’s Cold Fish.

Both Japanese films screened at the 2010 Toronto and Venice film festivals.

And the Guru Prize for the most energetic feature went to the Thai film Bangkok Knockout, by director Panna Rittikrai, where friends that are part of an informal fight club band together when a member is kidnapped.

And the Fantasia audiences voted Evan Kelly’s The Corridor, a sci-fi horror whodunit, as the best Canadian feature at the Canadian festival.

Elsewhere, the 2011 Fantasia festival jury, led by president and filmmaker Alexandre Franchi, gave the Cheval Noir Award for best film to the Danish comedy Clown, by Mikkel Nørgaard, a big screen adaptation of a long-running Danish TV comedy led by actors Frank Hvam and Casper Christensen.

The festival jury also named Japan’s Yoshimasa Ishibashi as the best director at Fantasia for his film Milocrorze: A Love Story.

And the best screenplay trophy went to Korean director Park Hoon-jung for The Unjust, which also earned Hwang Jeong-min and Ryoo Seung-beom the best actor trophies in Montreal.

And the juried best actress crown went to Norie Yasui for her star-turn in Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano by Japanese director Hisayasu Sato.

In all, 130 films screened at Fantasia during its July 14 to August 7 run, which ended with the Canadian premiere of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, directed by Troy Nixey and scripted by Guillermo del Toro.