Drum roll please...! The 2008 Genie Awards were held last night, Monday, March 3, in honour (if the “u” doesn’t give away the fact that the Genie Awards are Canadian, I’m not sure what more I can say) of films released in 2007 that represent the best of Canadian cinema. To be deemed as Canadian, however, a film must have a portion of its production budget come directly from Canada. Of course, the core elements of the films chosen need to be of quality and worthy of consideration as well.

Aside from the fact that these awards are called “Genies,” it’s interesting the way in which the films are chosen for nomination nods each year. After all, it doesn’t matter if you have high quality cinema chock-full of Canadian talent and crew. As we all know by now, Jason Reitman’s film Juno has taken the United States by storm; heck Diablo Cody won an Oscar for her script for goodness sakes! It seems that Reitman and both his charming leads' (Ellen Page and Michael Cera) Canadian lineage was not enough, for the films that receive Genie nods must be financed in some way by the Canadian dollar. Alas, Juno was left out of the 28th Annual Genie Awards.

With a history for nominating films which have little to no monetary life here in the States, this year’s Genie nominees most recognizable to the U.S. for Best Motion Picture included David Cronenberg’s throat-slashing thriller, Eastern Promises, and the Golden Globe winning film Away From Her. Similarly, Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises) and Gordon Pinset (Away From Her) were nominated in the Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role category for their respective roles. I would have never guessed that 20 percent of the Eastern Promises budget came from Canada since it's a film about Russians in London.

In the end, however, the great Cronenberg masterpiece was no match for the Sarah Polley film. Last night, Away From Her took home the Genie Award, which some say is the Canadian equivalent to the Oscar, for Best Motion Picture of the year. Congratulations! This film pretty much cleaned up at this awards ceremony: Gordon Pinset won for Best Male Lead, Sarah Polley for Best Direction, and Kristen Thomson for Best Supporting Actress. This begs the question, why haven’t I seen this film yet?

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