The People’s Choice Award from the just-wrapped 2025 50th Toronto Film Festival has gone to Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet, first runner-up is Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and second runner-up is Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. The latter two are both from Netflix.
The newly created International People’s Choice Award went to Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice. The Documentary winner was Barry Avrich’s The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue.
Voted on by audience members since 1978 and often considered a harbinger for the Best Picture Oscar, the People’s Choice Award has been won by such eventual Best Picture Academy Award winners as Nomadland, Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, American Beauty and Chariots of Fire. Among those that went on to Best Picture nominations include last year’s winner American Fiction, as well as The Fabelmans, Belfast, JoJo 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. Last year’s surprise winner, The Life Of Chuck had no North American distributor in place and was later picked up by Neon and released this summer making it Oscar eligible this year, just as the new People’s Choice winner is as well. So we shall see how the tradition of TIFF and Oscar hold up in this regard. Last year both the first runner up Emilia Perez and second runner up Anora went on to a collective 19 Oscar nominations between them, both nominated for Best Picture, with Anora winning.
Hamnet is a 2024 historical drama film co-written, co-edited and directed by Chloé Zhao, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal star in the emotionally charged drama that premiered at Telluride Film Festival and had its international premiere at TIFF. It is considered a major Oscar contender from Focus Features and represents Zhao’s second People’s Choice Award at TIFF after 2020’s Nomadland which went on to win the Best Picture Oscar.
Here is a list of all the TIFF award winners:
People’s Choice Award presented by Rogers: Hamnet, dir. Chloé Zhao
First runner-up: Frankenstein, dir. Guillermo del Toro
Second runner-up: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, dir. Rian Johnson
International People’s Choice Award presented by Rogers: No Other Choice, dir. Park Chan-wook
First runner-up: Sentimental Value, dir. Joachim Trier
Second runner-up: Homebound, dir. Neeraj Ghaywan
People’s Choice Documentary Award presented by Rogers: The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue, dir. Barry Avrich
First runner-up: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, dir. Baz Luhrmann
Second runner-up: You Had to Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution…, dir. Nick Davis
People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award presented by Rogers: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, dir. Matt Johnson
First runner-up: Obsession, dir. Curry Barker
Second runner-up: The Furious, dir. Kenji Tanigaki
Short Cuts Award for Best International Short Film:
Talk Me, dir. Joecar Hanna | Spain/USA
Honourable Mention:
Agapito, dirs. Arvin Belarmino & Kyla Danelle Romero | Philippines
Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Short Film:
The Girl Who Cried Pearls, dirs. Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczerbowski | Canada
Honourable Mention:
A Soft Touch, dir. Heather Young
Short Cuts Award for Best Animated Short Film:
To the Woods, dir. Agnès Patron | France
FIPRESCI Prize:
Forastera, dir. Lucía Aleñar Iglesias | Spain/Italy/Sweden
NETPAC Award:
In Search of The Sky (Vimukt), dir. Jitank Singh Gurjar | India
Best Canadian Discovery Award:
Blue Heron, dir. Sophy Romvari | Canada
Honourable Mention:
100 Sunset, dir. Kunsang Kyirong | Canada
Best Canadian Feature Film Award:
Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband), dir. Zacharias Kunuk | Canada
Honourable Mention:
There Are No Words, dir. Min Sook Lee | Canada
Platform Award:
To The Victory!, dir. Valentyn Vasyanovych | Ukraine/Lithuania
Honourable Mention:
Hen, dir. György Pálfi | Germany/Greece/Hungary
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