- Toronto Film Festival Awards 2004: This year’s People’s Choice Award has gone to Terry George’s real-life-inspired Rwandan genocide drama Hotel Rwanda, starring U.S. actor Don Cheadle as Hutu hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina and British actress Sophie Okonedo as his Tutsi wife.
Toronto Film Festival Awards 2004: Starring Don Cheadle, Terry George’s real-life-based Hotel Rwanda is top choice
In a perhaps unusually civic-minded edition of the Toronto Film Festival, movies with a political topic – even if in passing – dominated this year’s awards. (The 2004 Toronto Film Festival winners are listed further below.)
Based on the real-life story of a Kigali hotel manager credited with saving hundreds of lives during the 1994 Rwandan genocide that left hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsis and “moderate” Hutus dead, Terry George’s Anglo-Italian-South African drama Hotel Rwanda was the recipient of the People’s Choice Award.
As a consequence of its Toronto win* – and its now well-publicized similarities to Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Best Picture Academy Award winner Schindler’s List – Hotel Rwanda is now a potential favorite this upcoming awards season.
In the cast: U.S. actor Don Cheadle as Hutu hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina and British actress Sophie Okonedo as his Tutsi wife, in addition to a couple of other U.S. actors in small roles, Nick Nolte and Joaquin Phoenix.
Update: Toronto Film Festival winners tend to fare well at the Academy Awards.
Omagh, In My Father’s Den
Brad McGann’s In My Father’s Den, a U.K.-New Zealand co-production about a war journalist (Matthew Macfadyen) enmeshed in the disappearance of a teenage girl (Emily Barclay), was awarded the International Federation of Film Critics’ FIPRESCI prize. Also in the cast: Jimmy Keen, Colin Moy, and Miranda Otto.
Pete Travis’ Omagh, a made-for-television Irish drama about the relatives of victims of the bloodiest terrorist attack in Northern Ireland’s 30-year sociopolitical/religious conflict, won the Discovery Award. Paul Greengrass and Guy Hibbert co-wrote the screenplay. In the cast: Gerard McSorley, Michèle Forbes, Stuart Graham, and Oscar winner Brenda Fricker (My Left Foot, 1989).
Lastly, Michael Dowse’s mockumentary It’s All Gone Pete Tong, featuring Paul Kaye as a DJ who loses his hearing, and Daniel Roby’s horror thriller White Skin (a.k.a. Cannibal), featuring Marianne Farley as a sultry human-flesh eater, won, respectively, Best Canadian Film and Best Canadian First Film.
The 2004 Toronto Film Festival winners are listed immediately below.
Toronto Film Festival Awards 2004
People’s Choice Award: Hotel Rwanda (United Kingdom | South Africa | Italy)
International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Prize: In My Father’s Den (United Kingdom | New Zealand)
Discovery Award: Omagh (Ireland | United Kingdom)
Best Canadian Feature Film: It’s All Gone Pete Tong
Best Canadian Feature Film – Special Jury Citation: ScaredSacred – Dir.: Velcrow Ripper
Best Canadian First Feature Film: White Skin / La Peau blanche
Best Canadian Short Film: Man Feel Pain – Dir.: Dylan Akio Smith
“Toronto Film Festival Awards 2004: Rwandan Genocide” notes
Toronto Film Festival website.
See also: “Toronto Film Festival 2004: African Cinema Spotlight.”
Don Cheadle Hotel Rwanda image: United Artists.
“Toronto Film Festival Awards 2004: Rwandan Genocide” last modified in March 2026.