TORONTO -- Ang Lee's crowd-pleasing Chinese film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is being bandied about as a possible Toronto prize winner.
It's all speculation, but his romantic adventure/martial-arts thriller is thought to be a front-runner for the audience-voted People's Choice Award, presented by Benson & Hedges Film.
Other candidates are Paul Cox's Innocence, Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls, Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous and Christopher Guest's Best In Show.
The People's Choice and five other awards are being meted out by film fest director Piers Handling at an invitation-only luncheon tomorrow.
Other prizes include the Volkswagen Discovery Award, voted on by the 775-member media throng attending the festival. It goes to a young filmmaker in the Discovery program.
FIPRESCI -- an association of international film critics -- gives out its own jury award to an emerging director whose film is premiered at Toronto.
Canadians are up for three separate prizes, all determined by juries. The biggie is the $25,000 Toronto-CITY Award for the best Canadian feature. The $15,000 CITY-TV Award goes to the best rookie filmmaker. The NFB John Spotton Award, with $2,500 in cash and $7,500 in services, goes to the best short film.
Quebec's Philippe Falardeau is being touted as a possible Canuck winner for his hot little film La Moitie Gauche Du Frigo, which has emerged in the past two days as the homegrown "discovery" of the film fest.
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