'Imitation Game' wins top prize at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival

TORONTO, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- The Imitation Game has won the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival's top prize, the Grolsch People's Choice Award.

The honor is presented to the movie which festival audiences vote as their favorite.

Set for U.S. release Nov. 21, the historical thriller The Imitation Game casts Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch as "brilliant Cambridge mathematician, cryptanalyst and pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing, who spearheaded the Enigma code-breaking operation during World War II and was later persecuted by the British government for his homosexuality," a synopsis said. The film's cast also includes Keira Knightley and Allen Leech.

12 Years a Slave, which starred Chiwetel Ejiofor and featured Cumberbatch in a supporting role, won the festival's audience award last year. It then went on to earn the Best Picture Oscar.

The 2014 Grolsch People's Choice Documentary Award went to director Hajooj Kuka's Beats of the Antonov, which is set "in the world of the Sudanese farmers, herders and rebels of the Blue Nile and Nuba Mountain regions, who defiantly celebrate their heritage and tend their lands in the face of a government bombing campaign," said a summary on the festival's website.