'I Play Rocky' Wins VIFF 2026 Audience Award — SkimNews
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- "I Play Rocky" won the Audience Award in the Galas & Special Presentations category at VIFF 2026, telling the underdog story of Sylvester Stallone's journey to make and star in "Rocky."
- Banchi Hanuse's "Ceremony" won the Showcase category after previously taking the juried Tides Award; the documentary tracks the Nuxalk Nation's efforts to understand the decline of the ooligan, a culturally significant fish in Bella Coola.
- Former Pixar animator Louis Clichy won the Panorama prize with "Iron Boy," which explores themes of disability and agricultural modernization.
- Fernanda Salgado's "Ana, En Passant" took the Vanguard award — an animated drama about a young Black woman returning to her late grandmother's native town in Brazil.
- Cody Lightning's "Smudge the Blades" earned the Northern Lights award, a hockey drama following a team of Indigenous youth in Northern Alberta.
- The 45th VIFF ran Oct. 1-11, screening 162 features and 91 short films from 76 countries, with audiences selecting 10 favorites across programming sections that included Focus on New German Cinema, Insights, Spectrum, Portraits, and Altered States.
Why it matters: Two Indigenous-led stories — "Ceremony" and "Smudge the Blades" — taking top prizes reflects VIFF's emphasis on First Nations filmmaking, and "Ceremony" now arrives at the audience vote with a Tides Award already in hand. The breadth of 10 audience-favorite picks spanning 76 countries gives distributors and awards-season strategists a cross-genre read on what resonated at a festival that screened 253 total titles.
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