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<p>The Toronto International Film Festival concluded Sunday, with Taika Waititi&#8217;s Nazi/World War II satire &#8220;Jojo Rabbit&#8221; claiming the TIFF Audience Award. With this victory, the movie about a Nazi Youth member (Roman Griffin Davis) who has Adolf Hitler (Waititi) as an imaginary friend is now an awards season frontrunner.</p><p>Recent Audience Award winners that moved on to gaining the Academy Award for best picture include &#8220;Slumdog Millionaire,&#8221; &#8220;The Hurt Locker,&#8221; &#8220;12 Years a Slave&#8221; and last year&#8217;s &#8220;Green Book.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Jojo Rabbit,&#8221; also featuring Scarlett Johansson, Rebel Wilson and Sam Rockwell, divided critics when it debuted at the festival, earning a score of 52 out of 100 by Metacritic with 22 critic reviews in so far.</p><p>The frenzy and star power of this year&#8217;s festival recalled my visit to TIFF 10 years ago in 2009. If you haven&#8217;t noticed, I&#8217;m a big fan of film festivals, having visited at least seven different ones since 2002. That includes the Savannah Film Festival that will be underway in October, and volunteering at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. The Tribeca job is enough to say that I have previously worked for Donald Trump, who sponsored the volunteer crews, and Robert De Niro, who created the festival. My favorite is the New York Film Festival, which I have attended five times and hope to go again. It usually has some of my favorite actors and directors in attendance like Isabella Huppert, Benicio Del Toro, Tilda Swinton, Steve McQueen and Olivier Assayas.</p><p>But the festival that had the biggest impact on me was my trip to Toronto. It wasn&#8217;t just seeing the stars or attending one of the largest film festivals in the world. It was about reaching a goal I set for myself 11 months before I took the six-hour trek to Canada. In October 2008, I had a health scare. I was attending NYFF for the first time, and I was walking through Manhattan between screenings. For some reason, I became very exhausted and confused. I had another mishap prior to that, but I ignored it.</p><p>When I returned to Wilkes-Barre, I saw my doctor and learned that I had a health condition and that I need to eat better, exercise and lose weight. I was just a few pounds away from being obese, and my health would improve if I dropped a few pounds. I was advised to drop about 20, but I made my goal to be 50 pounds.</p><p>Instead of following a diet plan or falling for the latest fitness craze, I lost the wait on my own and along a slow, adaptable pace. I exercised seven days a week: high-impact cardio for two days, low-impact cardio and strength training three times a week and yoga/pilates twice a week. I didn&#8217;t join a gym at the beginning, but I did take lots of dance and yoga classes and worked out to exercise DVDs. I also counted calories and eliminated only a few things from my diet, like giving up French fries and regular sodas. To keep track of my work, I weighed myself once a week and set up rewards for every five pounds lost. These included buying new workout clothes, buying a dance class series, getting a new DVD and going to concerts like Bat For Lashes at Webster Hall in New York.</p><p>But the big reward was to spend four days at TIFF. The trip and the weight loss felt like pipe dreams. How in the world would I be able to drop 50 pounds, get healthy and go to Canada? I had never been on a health kick or left the country. On the day I received my diagnosis, I just bought three bags of Halloween candy I had no intention of giving away to costumed kids.</p><p>But as I started exercising and seeing results, the TIFF trip was closer to coming true. I researched the best ways to navigate through the large festival. More than 100 films are screened over less than two weeks, with Hollywood productions mixing with Canadian documentaries and independent horror movies. So I found help online by following Canadian film experts Shannon Ridler, ET Canada&#8217;s Rachel West and now-TIFF Senior Producer Sasha James. They had numerous tips for anyone wishing to go to the festival, from deciphering ticket packages to what hot movies were playing. By July, I was two months away from going and achieving my goal. I set up my hotel reservations, got my passport and read about all things Toronto.</p><p>Two weeks before my trip, I went on the scale again and smiled. I had lost 54 pounds &#8212; four pounds more than my goal. I felt healthier, happier and confident. It all became real when I crossed the border on Sept. 14, 2009. I made it, but I had to get to Toronto quickly because I had booked nine movies to watch in four days, with the first one starting 30 minutes after I arrived.</p><p>TIFF was amazing. I attended multiple red carpet premieres where I saw Rob Lowe, Jennifer Garner and director Werner Herzog. I got to meet Herzog, who is best known for helming documentaries, after the screening of his narrative film, &#8220;My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?&#8221; It was weird to have a celebrated director sign my ticket stub using a blue Crayola marker because that was all I had at the moment. Some of the best films I saw there were Lee Daniels&#8217; &#8220;Precious: Based on the Novel &#8216;Push&#8217; by Sapphire,&#8221; the South Korean drama &#8220;Mother,&#8221; the Australian horror flick &#8220;The Loved Ones&#8221; (I also met its director Sean Byrne), and the crime thriller &#8220;La Soga&#8221; from the Dominican Republic. &#8220;Precious&#8221; would go on to win the People&#8217;s Choice Award, now called the Audience Award. It would later be nominated for several Academy Awards, winning two for best supporting actress for Mo&#8217;Nique and best adapted screenplay.</p><p>As I watched and read about this year&#8217;s festival, I had flashbacks about the time I had 10 years ago. I kept off the way for about two years before I slowly gained back about 30 pounds as another health setback has eliminated about 90% of the exercises I enjoyed doing. Right now, I started another goal to lose weight, find exercises that I can do now and get back to healthy eating. Who knows, maybe my next goal will be to another high-profile festival.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Actor Matt Damon poses for a photograph with a fan after arriving on the red carpet for the premiere of the film &#8216;Ford vs. Ferrari&#8217; in Toronto on Monday. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_AP19252778570993.jpg</photo0><caption0>Actor Matt Damon poses for a photograph with a fan after arriving on the red carpet for the premiere of the film &#8216;Ford vs. Ferrari&#8217; in Toronto on Monday. </caption0><photoCredit0>Nathan Denette | The Canadian Press via AP </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_AP19253075128807.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Actor Adam Sandler takes pictures with fans at a premiere for &#8216;Uncut Gems&#8217; on day five of the Toronto International Film Festival at the Princess of Wales Theatre on Sept. 9 in Toronto. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_AP19253075128807.jpg</photo1><caption1>Actor Adam Sandler takes pictures with fans at a premiere for &#8216;Uncut Gems&#8217; on day five of the Toronto International Film Festival at the Princess of Wales Theatre on Sept. 9 in Toronto. </caption1><photoCredit1>Arthur Mola | Invision | AP </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_3983817419_76d5dafc55_o.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Lee Daniels, director of &#8216;Precious: Based on the Novel &#8220;Push&#8221; by Sapphire,&#8217; answers questions from the audience inside the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto on Sept. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_3983817419_76d5dafc55_o.jpg</photo2><caption2>Lee Daniels, director of &#8216;Precious: Based on the Novel &#8220;Push&#8221; by Sapphire,&#8217; answers questions from the audience inside the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto on Sept. </caption2><photoCredit2>Tamara Dunn | Times Leader </photoCredit2></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_3984597456_694905e02c_o.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Actors Rob Lowe and Jennifer Garner appear on stage during the film introduction at &#8216;The Invention of Lying&#8217; premiere at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto on Sept. 14, 2009. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo3>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_3984597456_694905e02c_o.jpg</photo3><caption3>Actors Rob Lowe and Jennifer Garner appear on stage during the film introduction at &#8216;The Invention of Lying&#8217; premiere at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto on Sept. 14, 2009. </caption3><photoCredit3>Tamara Dunn | Times Leader </photoCredit3></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_3990127123_7396fe0205_o.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Director Werner Herzog introduces his film during the premiere of &#8216;My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?&#8217; at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto. Herzog was very nice and gracious throughout the premiere, and it was great to confirm that he was a bit of a weirdo and a creative genius. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo4>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_3990127123_7396fe0205_o.jpg</photo4><caption4>Director Werner Herzog introduces his film during the premiere of &#8216;My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?&#8217; at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto. Herzog was very nice and gracious throughout the premiere, and it was great to confirm that he was a bit of a weirdo and a creative genius. </caption4><photoCredit4>Tamara Dunn | Times Leader </photoCredit4></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_AP19253596101613.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Josh Lucas arrives for the press conference of the film &#8216;Ford vs Ferrari&#8217; at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, on Sept. 10. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo5>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/web1_AP19253596101613.jpg</photo5><caption5>Josh Lucas arrives for the press conference of the film &#8216;Ford vs Ferrari&#8217; at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, on Sept. 10. </caption5><photoCredit5>Andrew Lahodynskyj | The Canadian Press via AP </photoCredit5></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Tamara Dunn</p><p>tdunn@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Tamara Dunn is the night news editor at the Times Leader. She is also a film lover who counts &#8220;Rear Window&#8221; and &#8220;Black Panther&#8221; as her favorites.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

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That’s A Wrap: Film festival recalls accomplishing goals, meeting stars