The Tornoto International Film Festival has awarded one of its top prizes to a UK film.
Gabriel Range's Death of a President won the FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) prize "for the audacity with which it distorts reality to reveal a larger truth".
The film is a fake documentary set three years after the 'assassination' of President Bush, focussing on the hunt for his killer.
This is familiar territory to Range, who is more familiar to British audiences for his powerful TV mockumentary The Day Britain Stopped - about a possible future in which the UK's transport network ground to a halt - and The Man Who Broke Britian - an equally chilling imagined account of what would happen if a rogue trader caused an economic collapse.
Range wasn't the only emerging talent to win an award at Toronto. Alejandro Gomez Monteverde scooped the People's Choice audience award for his movie Bella - the story of a waitress and a chef whose lives converge unexpectedly over a single day in New York.
The Diesel Discovery award also went to a novice film-maker. Norweigian director Joachim Trier's comedy debut Reprise wins a $10,000 prize.
The inauguaral Cultural Innovation Award - introduced to award the "artistry, innovation and audacity of one of the festivals Visions titles" was snagged by Ozer Kyzyltan's Takva - A Man's Fear of God. This Turkish/German collaboration follws a fortysomething singleton who finds his belief of God put to the test.
The Canadian first feature award went to Nel Mitrani for Sur La Trace D'Igor Rizzi (On The Trail of Igor Rizzi) which was described as "a truly cinematic meeting of style and substance" by the jury. The award for best Canadian feature, meanwhile, went to Jennifer Baichwal's documentary Manufactured Landscapes - a portrait of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky - described as "a profoundly evocative dialogue between artists of the highest calibre; finding exceptional beauty in the peril of our planet".
The Short Cuts Canada award - and its $10,000 purse - went to Maxuie Giroux for short film Les Jours, praised by the jury for its "precision, craft and its subtle exploration of grief."
Death Of A President will screen on Channel 4 this October.
