Where Do We Go Now? wins best film at Toronto film festival

Lebanese-born Nadine Labaki’s second directorial effort Et maintenant, on va où? (Where Do We Go Now?) on Sunday won the Toronto film festival’s People’s Choice Award for best picture.

Set against the backdrop of a war-torn nation, the film chronicles the determination of a group of women to protect their isolated, mine-encircled town from pervasive and divisive outside forces.

The film stars Ms Labaki, Claude Baz Moussawbaa, Layla Hakim, Yvonne Maalouf and Antoinette Noufaily trying to protect their families from more violence and grief by distracting the men in the village from succumbing to antagonism.

They hatch schemes such as beguiling the men with Ukrainian showgirls and serving them hash brownies at a dance party.

It premiered at Cannes in May and follows the runaway success of Ms Labaki’s debut film Caramel (2007). Runners-up for the prize were Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation and Ken Scott’s Starbuck.

The audience also gave a nod for best documentary to Jon Shenk for The Island President which follows Maldives President Mohammed Nasheed campaign to enlist world powers to fight global warming and prevent his nation from being swallowed up by the ocean. The two men came to Canada’s largest metropolis together to present the film, seeing an opportunity to bring much-needed attention to the plight of Mr Nasheed’s nation of 1,200 islands off the coast of India.

“Given the gravity of the ­situation and how important it is for us to bring the message across,” as well as due to his government’s modest means, the documentary seemed like a good idea, Mr Nasheed said.

For Mr Shenk, who won acclaim for his 2003 documentary The Lost Boys of Sudan, the film is as much about the arrival of democracy in an entirely Muslim country as it is about climate change.

But for Mr Nasheed it is about a fight for survival. The Toronto film festival is the biggest in North America and has traditionally been a key event for Oscar-conscious studios and distributors because it is attended by a sizable contingent of North American media.