“La Bola Negra,” a sweeping Spanish-language queer drama following the connected stories of three gay men, has won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, strengthening its position as an early Oscar contender.
Chosen by TIFF audiences, the festival’s top honor has long been viewed as one of the most reliable indicators of future Academy Awards success. Since 2012, every People’s Choice winner except one has received a Best Picture nomination. The exception came in 2024, when Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation “The Life of Chuck” took the prize. Last year’s winner, “Hamnet,” went on to earn eight Oscar nominations.
The film was made by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, the directing team popularly known as Los Javis. “La Bola Negra” had already made an impression at Cannes, where the filmmakers shared the Best Director award with Paweł Pawlikowski, who won for “Fatherland.”
Netflix picked up “La Bola Negra” after its Cannes debut and is mounting a major awards-season campaign for the movie. The streamer is also giving it its most extensive theatrical rollout to date, with a cinema release beginning Oct. 16 before it arrives on Netflix Dec. 2.
“This is a deeply personal film but it also carries a message of the importance and necessity of expressing who you are,” Los Javis said in a statement Sunday. “Knowing that audiences connected with it and made it their own is the greatest gift we could receive.”
“I Play Rocky,” Peter Farrelly’s comedy about the production of the classic boxing film “Rocky,” finished as the first runner-up. The second runner-up was “Being Heumann,” Siân Heder’s drama about disability rights advocate Judy Heumann.
TIFF also presents a separate People’s Choice Award for international cinema. This year’s honor went to “Elsinore,” featuring Andrew Scott as Scottish actor Ian Charleson, who performed “Hamlet” in London while living with AIDS. “Possible Love,” Lee Chang-dong’s Korean drama about the emotional fallout of mass layoffs, placed first runner-up, while Hur Jin-ho’s Korean procedural “The Assassin(s)” finished second runner-up.
The documentary award went to “Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been,” a portrait of the 85-year-old singer. In TIFF’s Midnight Madness competition, the audience favorite was “Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney,” Matthew Rankin’s gonzo-style documentary about the former Canadian prime minister.
The 51st Toronto International Film Festival concludes Sunday.
