The People’s Choice Award from the recently concluded 51st Toronto Film Festival has been awarded to Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra. The first runner-up is I Play Rocky, and the second runner-up is Being Heumann.
In addition to these awards announced on Sunday morning, the International People’s Choice Award was given to Simon Stone’s Elsinore. The Documentary People’s Choice winner was Barry Avrich’s Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been. Meanwhile, the Midnight Madness People’s Choice award went to Ladies And Gentlemen: Brian Mulroney; interestingly, last year’s box office hit Obsession was the first runner-up.
La Bola Negra follows three generations of men whose lives are deeply intertwined through desire, pain, and love. This film represents Spain in the race for the International Film Oscar and is expected to make a strong impact across various categories at the Academy Awards. Netflix will release it in theaters on October 16. Notably, both runners-up come from filmmakers whose previous works have snagged the Best Picture Oscar: Peter Farrelly’s Green Book for I Play Rocky (which also won TIFF’s People’s Choice in 2018) and Sian Heder’s Coda.
Voted on by audiences since 1978 and often seen as a predictor for the Best Picture Oscar, past winners of the People’s Choice Award include films like Nomadland, Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, American Beauty and Chariots of Fire. Films that received nominations for Best Picture after winning this award include last year’s winner Hamnet as well as American Fiction, The Fabelmans, Belfast, Jo Jo Rabbit, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Room, La La Land, The Imitation Game, Silver Linings Playbook, Precious, Life Is Beautiful, Places in the Heart and The Big Chill. So we’ll see how this tradition between TIFF and Oscar continues this year.
This year marks a significant change as TIFF has made it so that the Platform Award winner can now directly qualify for the Oscar International Film Award without needing submission from their home country; it’s one of only six film festivals that provide this opportunity. This year’s Platform Prize went to India’s Angh from filmmaker Theja Rio who is now automatically entered into this year’s International Film Oscar competition. India has yet to announce its official entry.
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