Benoît Pilon, director of Ce Qu'il Faut Pour Vivre, at the Montreal film festival on Aug. 23. (Sylvain Legaré/Montreal World Film Festival)

A Japanese film, Okuribito, by director Yojiro Takita, has won the top prize at the Montreal World Film Festival, but a film by Quebec filmmaker Benoît Pilon was the audience favourite.

Okuribito, about a young cellist who returns to his hometown and gets a job as an undertaker after losing his job in an orchestra, won the Grand Prize of the Americas award at the closing ceremonies of the Montreal festival on Sunday.

Takita is a veteran of more than 40 films who showed his 2003 film When the Last Sword is Drawn at the Montreal World Film Festival.

Pilon's film, about a Inuit man who is flown to a Quebec hospital to recover from tuberculosis in the 1950s, won a special Grand Jury Prize.

Natar Ungalaaq played the Inuit hunter who loses his will to live until he builds a relationship with a young boy in Ce Qu'il Faut Pour Vivre. (Sylvain Legaré/Montreal World Film Festival)

Ce qu'il faut pour vivre or The Necessities of Life also was named the most popular film at the festival, an award voted on by the audience, and the most popular Canadian film.

The Inuit hunter has given up on life and is ready to die until a compassionate nurse brings a young Inuit boy into the ward to ease his isolation. The hunter teaches the boy about traditional life on the land and their bond helps them both adjust.

Another Canadian winner was Jean-François Lévesque, whose NFB short Le Noeud Cravate (The Necktie) won best short film and best Canadian short film.

Turneja or The Tour, directed by Belgrade-born Goran Markovic, also received acclaim, winning the best director award and the Fipresci Prize from international film critics.

The Tour is about an acting troupe caught in the 1993 war in Bosnia-Herzogovina who use their skills to get out of trouble.

Markovic, one of the Czech school of Yugoslav directors, teaches at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade.

El Viaja de Teo (Teo's Voyage), about a boy who becomes separated from his father as they attempt to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, won a best actor award for Eri Canete and special mention from the ecumenical jury. It was directed by Mexico's Walter Doehner.

Wolf, set in a Sami community in Lapland and directed by Daniel Alfredson, won an ecumenical prize and was named by the jury for best artistic contribution.