Guy Maddin's 'Keyhole' Wins Top Canadian Feature Prize At Whistler Film Festival

7:30 PM PST 12/4/2011 by Etan Vlessing

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Courtesy of TIFF

Ben Addelman’s "Kivalina v. Exxon," a film about a tiny tribal community in Alaska taking giant oil companies to court for causing global warming, won for best documentary.

WHISTLER, B.C. (December 4, 2011 ) – The Jason Patric and Isabella Rossellini-starring supernatural film Keyhole by Guy Maddin on Sunday won the Borsos competition for best Canadian feature film at the Whistler Film Festival.

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Maddin’s 1930s gangster picture beat out strong competition from Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar, which won the best Canadian feature prize at the Toronto International Film Festival, and is Canada’s contender in the Academy Award’s best foreign language film competition.

Other winners in Whistler included the Mexican film Machete Language, a love story from writer-helmer Kyzza Terrazas, picking up the New Voices international feature competition prize, while the best documentary prize went to Ben Addelman’s Kivalina v. Exxon, a film about a tiny tribal community in Alaska taking giant oil companies to court for causing global warming.

Elsewhere, the best short film prize went to The Paris Quintet in Practice Makes Perfect, by director Benny Schuetze, and Ryan Flowers and Lisa Phams winning the best student short film for No Words Came Down.

The award-giving marked the end of the 11th edition of the Whistler Film Festival, which ran from November 30 to December 4.