Yahoo News Banff Rockie Awards: ‘The Last of Us’ Named Best Program
HBO’s The Last of Us from creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann was named program of the year at the Rockie Awards gala at the Banff World Media Festival on Tuesday night.
The first season of the post-apocalyptic hit was shot in Alberta. Jason Loftus’ Canadian documentary Eternal Spring picked up the Grand Jury Prize for the highest-scoring project in the Rockies program.
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“This is a culmination of a lot of work we’ve done related to human rights in China,” Loftus said as he accepted a trophy for the animated documentary about Falun Gong practitioners in China persecuted for their activism.
The Buffalo Rock Award went to the Star Trek franchise for its endurance with global fans.
In other prize-giving, The Office star Craig Robinson received the Peter Ustinov Comedy Award. Robinson, who is also executive producer and star of Peacock’s Killing It, hosted the Rockie Awards at the Banff festival.
“These are the best in the business who had a passport and a window to come,” Robinson told the Banff delegates with wry humor as he gave a nod to the evening’s winners amid an industry shutdown back in Los Angeles due to the WGA strike.
An emotional high point for the Rockies came when World of Wonder founders Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato received The Hollywood Reporter’s Impact Award. “Giving a global space to over 600 of the world’s best drag queens is only part of their television success,” THR editorial director Nekesa Mumbi Moody said when introducing Bailey and Barbato, who earlier in the day took part in an informal conversation at the festival.
“Some people are still fearful of drag and some people are still trying to present drag as a threat,” Barbato told the Rockie Awards as he pointed to recent anti-drag performance legislation in several states. He added that RuPaul’s Drag Race and MTV joined the American Civil Liberties Union in backing The Drag Defense Fund to support LGBTQ rights work.
“We’ve raised close to $1.5 million,” Barbato said to another round of applause before he invited Banff attendees to help by donating to the fund. Bailey and Barbato’s credits over three decades also include Party Monster, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Pam: Girl on the Loose, Being Chaz, Tori & Dean: Inn Love, #CandidlyNicole, I Am Britney Jean and Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes.
In other prize-giving at the Rockies, veteran film and TV star Garcelle Beauvais, well known for her role on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, picked up the Inclusion Award.
“I want to say that the journey to here has been incredible. My twin boys are here, and I hope they think I’m really cool,” Beauvais said before recalling her childhood in Haiti. “In watching that intro, I was thinking about what I would tell that little girl in Haiti, and I think I would tell her, ‘Don’t be scared,’” she said to applause.
Elsewhere, a career achievement award was given to Canadian Indigenous director Alanis Obomsawin, whose credits include Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, Rocks at Whiskey Trench and The People of the Kattawapiskak River.
“Something is happening, and we have to let them know we appreciate it and we must continue… I love my country, and I love you all,” 90-year-old Obomsawin said of the Canadian government’s ongoing reconciliation efforts with its First Nation peoples after receiving a standing ovation from the festival audience.
Other award winners include Sort Of producer Sphere Media, which received the Innovative Producer Award, and the award of excellence that went to Irish actress-showrunner Sharon Horgan (Bad Sisters, Catastrophe).
The festival, the Directors Guild of Canada and Warner Bros. Discovery Access Canada also named Elza Kephart of Midnight Kingdom Films as the first recipient of the Jean-Marc Vallée bursary in memory of the late Canadian director behind Dallas Buyers Club and Big Little Lies.
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