"I'm touched. This has been something — a crazy experience," remarked director Jean-Marc Vallée upon accepting the best director Genie Award from the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television.
Vallée's film, C.R.A.Z.Y., the story of a gay youth coming of age in the Quebec of the 1960s and 1970s, swept the Genies with a total of ten wins out of 12 nominations. In addition to the best director trophy, other awards that went C.R.A.Z.Y. include best film, best actor (Michel Côté, who beat his young co-star Marc-André Grondin, above), and best original screenplay (Vallée and François Boulay).
C.R.A.Z.Y. has also become one of the most commercially successful Canadian films ever.
Deepa Mehta's controversial Water — which caused a major political stir while it was being filmed in India — was a distant runner-up, with three awards, including a best actress trophy for Seema Biswas.
Writer-director Atom Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies, which caused a stir of a different kind — its sexual content was deemed too explicit for the faint of heart — won the best adapted screenplay award. Based on Rupert Holmes' novel, the film stars Colin Firth, Kevin Bacon, and Alison Lohman (above).