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The 20th annual Available Light Film Festival sparked audiences and filmmakers in an exciting 18 days of cinema, ALFF Industry sessions, ALFF LIVE livestream concerts and ALFF Creator Talks over 100+ virtual and in-person events. Attendance of these events included: 3130 event/film streams, 680 admissions to in-cinema events and 100 patrons engaging with media art exhibition throughout the city for a total of more than 3900 admissions. The actual number of people who enjoyed ALFF programming this year likely exceeds 7000 admissions since ALFF Online content was watched by more than one person in many of the households where streaming took place.
Audiences at in-cinema screenings and streaming from home were asked to rate every film they watched in order to determine the ALFF 2022 Audience Choice Awards winners. The winner of the ALFF Audience Choice Award for Best Canadian Documentary, Rob Is Analog, was also the audience favourite overall. Yukon filmmaker, Jessica Hall's funny and charming documentary about “Radiorob” Hopkins: a ramshackle communications pirate who pioneered community radio in Southern Yukon and fights for the public’s right to over-the-air analog community tv, drew the third largest combined in-person and online attendance. Toronto filmmakers Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson's unflinching realist portrait of three low-income families struggling to endure within a system that’s set them up for failure, Scarborough, is the winnner of the ALFF Audience Choice Award for Best Canadian Feature Fiction.
The films with the highest attendance at ALFF 2022 were international films: The Worst Person in the World (Verdens verste menneske) directed by Norwegian filmmaker, Joachim Trier and Hive (Zgjoi) by Blerta Basholli from Kosovo. The other Canadian films that generated the highest audiences were Skymaster Down (Dir. Andrew Gregg), Not About Me (Dir. Kelly Milner), DƏNE YI'INJETL - The Scattering of Man (Dir. Luke Gleeson), Portraits from a Fire (dir. Trevor Mack), Wildhood (Dir. Bretten Hannam), Run Woman Run (dir. Zoe Hopkins) and Night Raiders (Danis Goulet).
The Top 13 ALFF Audience Choice films were:
1. Rob Is Analog
2. Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy
3. Scarborough
4. Night Raiders
5. Not About Me
6. Skymaster Down
7. Wochiigii lo: End of the Peace
8. Wildhood
9. Food for the Rest of Us
10. Firebird + Albedo - In Search of a Frozen Ocean (tied)
11. Hive
12. The Worst Person in the World
13. Portraits From a Fire
More festival wrap-up coming soon!