David Cronenberg's 'A Dangerous Method,' Jon Cassar's 'The Kennedys' Dominate Directors Guild of Canada Awards

TORONTO - No surprise here: Canada’s penchant for dressing actors in fancy ruffs for foreign costume dramas had David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method and Jon Cassar’s The Kennedys emerging as the big winners Saturday night at the Directors Guild of Canada Awards in Toronto.

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Cronenberg’s film about a woman who came between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, starring Keira Knightley, Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortensen, swept the movie awards at the Canadian kudosfest.

The period drama won for best direction, best feature film, best production design, best picture editing by Ron Sanders and best sound editing.

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On the TV side, Cassar (24) won for best direction for The Kennedys, the Katie Holmes and Greg Kinnear-starring mini-series about the legendary American family.

The eight-part project was also named best TV movie/mini-series, and won for best production design, best picture editing and best sound editing in the same category.

Showtime’s The Borgias dominated the TV drama category, earning Jeremy Podeswa the best TV series direction prize.

The Renaissance costume drama also won the best TV drama award and picked up trophies for best production design and best picture editing in the TV drama competition.

Foreign costume dramas like The Borgias and The Tudors, mostly structured as minority co-productions with minimal Canadian participation, have dominated Canadian TV awards in recent years.

Cash-strapped Canadian broadcasters have increasingly commissioned multi-passport costume dramas, whose creative is driven out of the U.S. and whose budgets can be spread across a host of co-producing markets.

At the same time, homegrown laughers have kept it in the family at award shows here.

The best TV comedy prize at the DGC awards Saturday night went to Call Me Fitz, the Canadian pay TV sitcom that stars Jason Priestley.