Benedict Cumberbatch as gay code
breaker Alan Turing in The Imitation Game has won the Toronto
International Film Festival's Grolsch People's Choice Winner, the
festival's top prize.
Writing at Deadline.com,
Pete Hammond said the award, which is voted on by fans, “can be a
real harbinger of things to come in Oscar season. In fact, last
year's eventual Best Picture winner, 12 Years a Slave, took
the same prize.”
The film follows the life of Alan
Turing, a brilliant mathematician who helped crack the German Enigma
machine code – a triumph of computer science and a turning point
for the Allies in World War II.
After the war, Turing was charged and
convicted with gross indecency for participating in a sexual
relationship with another man. He received a sentence of chemical
castration and later committed suicide.
The Imitation
Game, which opens stateside on November 21, also stars Keira
Knightly as Joan Clarke, a fellow code-breaker engaged to Turing for
a short time before he confessed he was gay.