Israeli film honored at Toronto festival
Eran Riklis' new movie 'Zaytoun' is second runner-up for BlackBerry People's Choice award for best film. David O. Russell's 'Silver Linings Playbook' takes top prize; first runner-up is Ben Affleck's 'Argo'
David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook," a dramatic comedy about a man who returns to his family home after eight months in a mental institution, took home the BlackBerry People's Choice award for best film at the 37th edition of the festival.
Recent winners of the People's Choice award, which is selected by festival audiences, include Oscar-winners "The King's Speech" and "Slumdog Millionaire."
The first runner-up for the prize was Ben Affleck's "Argo," a fact-based thriller about an outlandish plan to get six stranded Americans out of Tehran after the 1979 invasion of the American Embassy by having them masquerade as a Canadian film crew.
In "Zaytoun", which received positive reviews from journalists and critics during the festival, a downed Israeli fighter pilot strikes a bargain with a gun-wielding boy in a Lebanese refugee camp in the early 1980s.
The youth, Fahed (Abdallah El Akal), agrees to assist the captured soldier, Yoni (Stephen Dorff), escape, if in exchange Yoni helps him flee across the border to the Galilee to replant a small potted olive tree.
The sapling, which had been snatched when his family fled their ancestral lands, remained the boy's only inheritance from his father.
Reuters and AFP contributed to this report
