'Imitation Game' takes top audience prize at Toronto Film Festival

The Imitation Game, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, the brilliant British mathematician who cracked the Nazi Enigma code during World War II and was later ruined for being outed as a homosexual, was voted the favorite film by audiences at the Toronto Film Festival. Directed by Morten Tyldum and co-starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode, The Imitation Game leaped into the Oscar race and was warmly embraced by audiences, who named it the Grolsch People’s Choice Award. It will open in theaters on Nov. 21.

The first runner-up was Isabel Coixet’s Learning to Drive, which stars Ben Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson as two New Yorkers who bond over drivers ed. The second runner-up was Theodore Melfi’s St. Vincent, the Bill Murray movie in which he plays a curmudgeon who takes the neighbor’s kid under his wing.

The Prize of the International Critics (FIPRESCI) for Special Presentations went to Oren Moverman’s Time Out of Mind, which stars Richard Gere as a homeless man attempting to reconnect with his daughter.

A complete list of honored TIFF films can be viewed here.