Oui, the Jury: Days and Nights Deliberating Canadian Bests at the Windsor Film Fest
By Chris Knight
Years ago, when I was a full-time film critic for the National Post, I used that job to get out of jury duty.
Responding to a provincial summons, I said I could not be spared from work. There was a Fast and Furious movie coming out! What if Tom Cruise got a new girlfriend? I couldn’t be sequestered! Put me on a jury and you’d be looking at one angry man.
But this month I participated in my first ever jury, weighing in on the winner of the $25,000 Canadian film prize at the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF), which wraps Nov. 8. Far from being summoned, I volunteered.
A film prize jury is a literal labour of love. It’s not a question of guilt or innocence. Each of the 10 nominated filmmakers was already guilty of creating a work of art. We just had to decide who was most culpable.
We were five. My colleagues were Rachel Ho, a former lawyer, now an award-winning writer and Golden Globe Awards voter. Danish Vahidy is vice president of marketing at Mongrel Media, whose “running dogs” logo is familiar to filmgoers.
Our president was Michael Mabbott, whose 2024 doc Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story won a Peabody Award and the best documentary prize from the Toronto Film Critics Association. It was also among the 10 nominees for WIFF’s Canadian film prize that year. It lost to Meryam Joobeur’s Who Do I Belong To.
The fifth jury member was Barbara Ulrich, a New York-born Quebec actress who got her start in the 1964 film Le chat dans le sac (The Cat in the Bag) when she was not yet 20. I watched part of it on the NFB website after meeting her, and what a chronological whiplash that was!
Being on a film jury is a wildly uncertain affair. We were given no rules or strictures, aside from keeping our verdict a secret between the time it was decided on Saturday night and the announcement Sunday morning.
But colleagues were curious. When did I watch the movies? (I had seen two at TIFF and had links to the rest on my laptop.) What did I think of film X, Y and Z? I had people talk up their favourites, and more than one explain why a given title should NOT win. We the jury all arrived in Windsor on Thursday for the opening-night screening of Paper Tiger, and an opening-night party that featured posters for the 10 nominees. They included four documentaries: Ashley Duong’s Ba’s Book; Matthew Rankin’s Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney; Rico King’s Nekai Walks; and Sean Menard’s Run Terry Run.
Also in the running, the features Nina Roza by Geneviève Dulude-De Celles, which is also Canada’s Oscar pick for Best International Feature; Haunted by Rafaël Ouellet; Julian by Louise Bagnall; Neverman by Rodrigo Barriuso; Pauline by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette; and You Will Be Free by Bachir Bensaddek.
Our first group meeting was Friday night in the hotel where we were all staying. An hour-long meet-and-greet, it allowed us to get to know a little about each other, like the fact that Vahidy owned Louis B. Mayer’s old office chair, and a motorcycle helmet once worn by Pamela Anderson.
WIFF jury members Michael Mabbott, Rachel Ho, Danish Vahidy, Chris Knight and Barbara Ulrich
We weren’t technically supposed to start deciding, but right away we noted a few films we felt didn’t rise above the rest. We parted ways with a promise to return the next day with a top-three list each.
Outside of that, we acted like any other invitees to a major festival, lapping up films at the screenings that our “special guest” passes let us attend, no ticket required. Barbara and I were at one of the “drop-in dinners” that are a welcome social component under festival head Vincent Georgie. Michael and I bumped into each other at the hotel pool.
I took in the dark doc Molly vs. The Machines, about the death of a 14-year-old girl and the blame ascribed to social media. I watched the Ethan Hawke thriller The Weight, a Depression-era tale about a quartet of convicts on a mission to transport stolen gold. And I thrilled to Sandra Hüller’s performance in Rose as a 17th-century woman who disguises herself as a man so she can obtain a degree of freedom.
Runner-up - literally - Run Terry Run
On Saturday at 6 p.m. the official deliberations began. We met at the Armouries, a two-storey red-brick Richardsonian Romanesque edifice built in 1900. Once the only armoury in Essex County, it’s now run by Windsor University, but its imposing exterior remains unchanged.
We were shown into a tall round room on the second floor, part of a corner tower. Inside, a wobbly round conference table was laid out with silver WIFF ballpoint pens and pads of paper, and a side table laden with drinks, coffee and decaf, sugar and milk and cream. (No sharp implements.)
I wish I could say we were locked in that tower, or that the lad outside who at one point took pictures for us was a guard and not just a volunteer. But even minus the melodrama we in the conclave felt the weight of the task. $25,000 is not an insubstantial chunk of change, especially for a Canadian filmmaker.
Our collected top-threes amounted to five votes for Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney; three each for Ba’s Book and Run Terry Run; and two each for Nina Roza and You Will Be Free. But despite the chart-topping position of Rankin’s film, we discussed all five at length.
Barbara was enamoured of You Will Be Free, and we all agreed that Run Terry Run was a tremendous testament to a heroic Canadian, though perhaps not to Canadian film. By the 90-minute mark, we concluded that Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney was a singular piece of art. Guilty as charged. Habemus WIFFam!
At this point a different kind of fun began. Michael texted Nathalie, the media rep on the festival team, to let her know our deliberations were over. She alerted Vincent so that he could hustle over via golf cart — a quirky WIFF tradition — to join us for dinner.
We headed to The Cook’s Shop, a storied Italian restaurant with a pedigree that extends back to the 1970s. The dark basement space, full of even darker corners and heavy (bullet-proof?) pillars, was once a place where one went not to be seen. Trysts and mob meetups were common. I enjoyed a filet mignon but, when it came to dessert, cannoli seemed too risky. I opted for crème brûlée.
Vincent — whom I learned goes by “Vince” among Cook’s Shop staff — arrived (via golf cart!) and was delighted with our choice. He loves film, and curated the nominees. No doubt he’d have been happy with whatever we picked. We talked about the winner and the other nominees, and then the conversation flowed easily into more personal stories.
Danish spoke of time spent with Pamela Anderson when she was promoting The Last Showgirl in 2025, and of owning that motorcycle helmet. I mentioned the joy of having interviewed Sir Patrick Stewart, who had just passed away.
Barbara had the most (and the best) stories, like the time she and her husband, Cat in the Bag director Gilles Groulx, were visiting California in 1969 and met a member of the Black Panthers.
“Why are you dressed like us?” he demanded of the black-clad Quebecers. Gilles replied calmly: “We’re not dressed like you; you’re dressed like us.”
They identified their province, then steeped in separatism and possible revolution. “The Black Panther said, ‘Power to the people,’” Barbara recalled. “And then he sold us a cookbook.” She still uses it regularly.
We talked about actors and directors who had died too soon, with shout-outs to Sam Peckinpah, Stanley Kubrick and Robert Altman. Eventually, the staff gently suggested we leave — the restaurant was empty, the cleaning staff at work — and we made our way outside.
Michael and Danish opted to head to a nearby bar, and Vincent said he’d join them, but first I wanted to see the golf cart. Nay, drunk on my juror’s power, I demanded it!
And that was how I came to be rumbling through the midnight streets of downtown Windsor, perched in the back of a tiny, gas-powered runabout, staring back at the headlights of much bigger vehicles and their curious drivers, wedged between my fellow juror Rachel and the festival’s executive director. Barbara rode shotgun.
Rankin won the Canadian film prize. But there was a second verdict. WIFF was a blast, without a reasonable doubt. And so say we all.