The FIPRESCI Prize for the Discovery program at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival was awarded to Heather Young for Murmur, which the jury selected “for its impressive, minimalist, and precise storytelling — both in its structure and its use of static camerawork and framing — and for its empathetic and powerful simplicity in deconstructing the effects of an addictive personality.”
In Heather Young’s bold debut feature, an aging, isolated woman ordered to perform community service for a DUI discovers that adopting ailing pets to fill the void in her life can be its own obsession.
The FIPRESCI Prize for the Special Presentations program went to Coky Giedroyc for How to Build a Girl. “Led by a performance by Beanie Feldstein, our winning film is a witty and heartfelt story of an irrepressible teenage girl who breaks into the snooty boys’ club of English rock criticism, loses her soul, and then gains it back again. Congratulations to How to Build a Girl,” said the jury.
A working-class teenager (Beanie Feldstein) tries to reinvent herself as a hip London music critic, in this unconventional coming-of-age How to Build a Girl, based on British author Caitlin Moran’s semiautobiographical novel. Also starring Chris O’Dowd, Emma Thompson, and Paddy Considine.