TORONTO -- After 10 days and more than 300 movies, the lights went up on the Toronto International Film Festival Saturday, with event director Piers Handling remarking that the 2008 edition was characterized by some remarkable onscreen turns.

"I think that it was, perhaps, the year of the performer, of the actor," he said in an interview after the festival awards brunch.

"I saw so many extremely well-acted films where the performances ... they were the things you noticed the most."

Many critics who attended the annual cinematic marathon seemed to agree.

Highly praised portrayals included Anne Hathaway as a recovering drug addict in Jonathan Demme's "Rachel Getting Married," Mickey Rourke as an aging grappler in Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" and  Kristin Scott Thomas as a former inmate getting to know her sister again in the French-language drama "I've Loved You So Long."

As usual, there were also some titles that picked up strong word-of-mouth buzz during the fest. Among them was "Slumdog Millionaire," a rollicking adventure tale from "Trainspotting" director Danny Boyle that received the $15,000 Cadillac People's Choice Award on Saturday.

The kudo -- which is voted on by festival audiences -- delighted one of the film's stars, Freida Pinto, who said she arrived at the Toronto event "with no expectations."

"It was an exhilarating feeling," she said of sitting in the audience during the premiere of "Slumdog Millionaire."

"When they clapped and gasped and literally went ga-ga over the last dance sequence, it was a wonderful feeling ... I was shaking."

Other prizes handed out Saturday included the $15,000 Citytv award for best Canadian first feature film, given to Marie-Helene Cousineau and Madeline Piujuq Ivalu for "Before Tomorrow," about an Inuit grandmother and child abandoned on a desolate island.

The $30,000 Citytv award for best Canadian feature film, meanwhile, went to Rodrigue Jean for "Lost Song," about a woman who plunges into depression after moving with her husband and newborn baby to a remote area north of Montreal.

And the $10,000 Diesel Discovery award went to British director Steve McQueen for "Hunger," a disturbing portrait of the Maze prison outside Belfast during Bobby Sands' 1981 hunger strike.

Last year's fest, which featured eventual Oscar nominees "No Country For Old Men," "Atonement" and "Juno", was a tough act to follow.

The lack of such titles this year caused some critics to grumble early on that the 2008 event wasn't up to snuff.

But New York Times film critic A.O. Scott questions that assessment.

"I know that there's been some talk that it's been an off year, other journalists have written that, that there haven't been as many ... big break-out things ... I always find those judgments a little bit suspect," he said in a telephone interview after returning to New York from the festival.

"Toronto, it's such a huge festival ... I don't know how anyone really comes to a comprehensive judgment of the whole thing."

In addition to "Slumdog Millionaire," another favourite was "It Might Get Loud," a documentary about the electric guitar from Oscar-winner Davis Guggenheim that featured Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, U2's The Edge and Jack White of the White Stripes.

Legendary critic Roger Ebert, meanwhile, lauded Ramin Bahrani's "Goodbye Solo," about a Senegalese-American taxi driver in North Carolina.

While last year's fest featured several films about the Iraq war, Kathryn Bigelow's acclaimed "The Hurt Locker" was one of the few major titles at TIFF 08 that touched on the conflict.

Many films seemed to be looking inward and Scott noted that much of the best of the fest did not come from big studio movies.

"For me the really interesting thing about TIFF this year ... is that the very strong work to me seems to be on the smaller scale," he says, citing movies like the Michelle Williams vehicle "Wendy and Lucy" and the South Korea/USA coming-of-age film "Treeless Mountain."

Handling says there are a number of films to be released later in the fall that were not available to fall festivals.

"On the whole, we feel extremely happy with the selection here," he said. "I thought it was a pretty flawless festival. ... It was a very good event this year."