“American Fiction” has won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF organizers announced at an awards brunch on Sunday.
The Orion/MGM film by first-time director Cord Jefferson is a barbed satire that stars Jeffrey Wright as a writer who, to his dismay, achieves enormous success after as a joke writing a book filled with what he feels are the worst and most pandering cliches of Black representation. In its review, TheWrap called the film “an outlandishly assured directorial debut, a beautifully modulated film that takes a great actor, Jeffrey Wright, and gives him a spectacular showcase.”
While the film did not come into the festival as one of its highest profile selections, it was an immediate sensation after its Friday night premiere at the Princess of Wales Theatre, drawing some of TIFF’s most positive reviews.