‘The Breadwinner’ among early Canadian Screen Awards winners

FILE: The Breadwinner Movie Poster (Photo By Source, Fair use)

TORONTO — Canadian Screen Awards co-hosts Jonny Harris and Emma Hunter kicked off Sunday’s show by riffing on all things Canuck.

The two did a bit on the chemistry between Olympic ice dance champions Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue, cracked cloning jokes about the Space sci-fi hit “Orphan Black,” and remarked on how it took four anchors to replace Peter Mansbridge on the CBC flagship news program “The National.”

“Makes me feel better that it only took two of us to replace (last year’s host) Howie Mandel,” said Harris, a CBC staple on the series “Still Standing” and “Murdoch Mysteries.”

The Oscar-nominated animated drama “The Breadwinner” and the Nova Scotia-set biopic “Maudie” were among the early winners on what was the last of several gala nights held throughout the week.

“The Breadwinner,” based on Canadian author Deborah Ellis’s children’s novel about a young girl who helps her family in Afghanistan, won trophies in the pre-broadcast show including best adapted screenplay for Anita Doron.

“I think her courage and compassion started it all,” Doran said backstage of Ellis, who based her book on the testimony of Afghan women she spoke with in refugee camps in Pakistan.

“Everybody on the team was making the same film with the same intention — to be authentic, to tell the truth and to tell the truth of this girl.”

“Maudie” won trophies including best original screenplay for Sherry White and best supporting actor for Ethan Hawke, who played the husband to Sally Hawkins’ lead character, real-life Nova Scotia folk artist Maud Lewis.

Hawkins was recently nominated for an Oscar for her starring turn in the Ontario-shot, Academy Award-winning film “The Shape of Water.”

“Because ‘Maudie’ came out like a year earlier than ‘The Shape of Water,’ there was a lot of … really early Oscar buzz around her performance in (‘Maudie’) and then ‘The Shape of Water’ came in and kind of stole that buzz,” White said with a laugh backstage.

“Because you can’t be nominated for two (Oscars), so that kind of stole our thunder, but that’s OK.”

Other multiple winners early in the night included “Hochelaga, Land of Souls,” which was Canada’s pick for the best foreign-language film category at this year’s Oscars but ultimately didn’t make the short list. It won trophies including best art direction and best cinematography.

Bahar Nouhian of the Tehran teen drama film “Ava” won best actress in a supporting role.

“For all the women, thank you,” Nouhian said onstage.

The Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television puts on the awards, which honour television, film and digital media. The bulk of the trophies were handed out earlier in the week.

Winners at previous galas included the CTV detective drama “Cardinal,” which took a five trophies, and CBC’s “Baroness von Sketch Show” and “Alias Grace,” which got four awards each.

“Baroness” took trophies including best sketch comedy program or series and best writing in its genre.

“Alias Grace,” a miniseries based on Margaret Atwood’s novel, took awards including a writing one for Sarah Polley and a directing one for Mary Harron.

This year’s Canadian Screen Awards boasted a “solid slate” of female nominees

Effort to eradicate sexual misconduct in the entertainment industry was a topic on the red carpet as attendees wore pins for the #AfterMeToo group, which is aimed at mobilizing reform on sexual violence in the workforce.

The academy was also slated to devote some commercial time to campaign during the broadcast.

“It’s a practical and structural way of dealing with the problems that have been revealed with the #MeToo movement,” Atwood said of the #AfterMeToo movement on the red carpet.