Silver Linings Playbook gets top prize of Toronto film fest

PanARMENIAN.Net - Silver Linings Playbook, starring Bradley Cooper as a man recovering from a breakdown, has won the top prize at Toronto International Film Festival, according to BBC News.

Directed by The Fighter's David O Russell, the dramatic comedy also stars The Hunger Games' Jennifer Lawrence as Cooper's love interest. Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver play the parents he moves back in with after eight months in a mental institution.

Argo, directed by Ben Affleck, was the People's Choice Award runner up.

This year's other Toronto winners include Seven Psychopaths, which reunites In Bruges director Martin McDonagh and Colin Farrell as a scriptwriter who falls in with criminals.

Also featuring Christopher Walken and Woody Harrelson, audiences voted it the winner of the Midnight Madness Award.

The top documentary award was won by Bartholomew Cubbins' Artifact, which follows Jared Leto and his band Thirty Seconds to Mars as they struggle to record the album This Is War while involved in a legal battle with their record label.

Other films that impressed critics and audiences included Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix and Bill Murray's turn as Franklin D Roosevelt in Hyde Park on Hudson.

One of the industry's top festivals, Toronto often serves as a launchpad for films seeking distribution deals.

The Place Beyond the Pines, starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Derek Cianfrance, was the first major sale, picked up for a reported $2.5 million.

Other sales included sex addiction comedy Thanks for Sharing starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Ruffalo and pop singer Pink, Imogene with Kristen Wiig and Byzantium from The Crying Game's Neil Jordan.