“La Bola Negra,” Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s decades-spanning Spanish drama, has won the People’s Choice Award at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF organizers announced at an awards ceremony on Sunday. “I Play Rocky” was the runner-up, followed by “Being Heumann.”
The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where Calvo and Ambrossi won the Best Director Award. It was picked up by Netflix, which plans a major theatrical release and awards campaign.
“La Bola Negra” is the first non-English-language film to win the People’s Choice Award since “Where Do We Go Now?” in 2011.
While most major film festivals convene juries to hand out their top awards, Toronto puts its signature prize in the hands of the public. Viewers at the festival’s public screenings are invited to vote for their favorite films on the TIFF website, with the film getting the highest percentage of votes from its viewers winning.
The British drama “Elsinore” won the People’s Choice Award for international films in a rare win for an English-language film in that category. “Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been” won for documentaries and “Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney” won for the festival’s Midnight Madness section.
Theja Rio’s “Angh,” a film set in Nagaland region in the northeast of India, won the jury prize in the festival’s Platform section, which consisted of 12 films from around the world. For the first time, the winner of that prize joins winners from the Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice and Busan festivals and automatically qualifies in the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film category.
Serville Poblete’s “Sunburn” won the award as the festival’s best Canadian film, while Cody Lightning’s “Smudge the Blades” won the Best Canadian Discovery prize as the best first or second film by a Canadian director.
The FIPRESCI Award for the best first film went to David Turpin’s “Ancestors,” while the NETPAC Award went to Hosam Abu Dan’s Palestinian film “Thirteen in Gaza.”
In the Short Cuts program of short films, awards and $10,000 prizes went to the animated short “Into the Betaverse,” the Canadian film “Fight Kid” and the international film “Mammalia.”
While the first 30 years of the festival found only occasional agreement between the People’s Choice and Academy Awards voters, the TIFF award has become a fairly reliable Oscar predictor over the last two decades.
Ever since “Slumdog Millionaire” won the award in 2008, 16 of the 18 People’s Choice winners have gone on to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture, and five of them – “Slumdog,” “The King’s Speech,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Green Book” and “Nomadland” – have won the top Oscar. In that time, eight of TIFF’s second-place finishers have become best-pic nominees and so have six of the third-place finishers.
Over the last decade, the only People’s Choice winner not to be nominated for Best Picture was Mike Flanagan’s “The Life of Chuck.” The film won at TIFF in 2024 but was not released until the following year and not given a significant Oscar campaign by Neon, which also had 2024’s Best Picture winner (and third-place People’s Choice finisher), “Anora.”
Going into Sunday’s ceremony, the likeliest winners seemed to be “I Play Rocky,” “Being Heumann” and “The Debut.” “Onwards and Sideways,” “Misty Green” “Club Kid” “Elsinore” “Wild Horse Nine” “Tender Loving Care”
Here is the complete list of TIFF winners:
People’s Choice Award
Winner: “La Bola Negra,” Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi First runner up: “I Play Rocky,” Peter Farrelly Second runner up: “Being Heumann,” Sian Heder
International People’s Choice Award
Winner: “Elsinore,” Simon Stone First runner up: “Possible Love,” Lee Chang-dong Second runner up: “The Assassin(s),” Hur Jin-ho
People’s Choice Award, Documentaries
Winner: “Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been,” Barry Avrich First runner up: “Black Sunflowers,” James Marcus Haney Second runner up: “The Ultra Runner,”Mila Aung-Thwin
People’s Choice Award, Midnight Madness
Winner: “Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney,” Matthew Rankin First runner up: “The Spiral,” Paolo Strippoli Second runner up: “Arrested Memory,” Sabu
Platform Prize
Winner: “Angh,” Theja Rio Honorable Mention: “Brace Your Heart,” Amanda Kernell
Best Canadian Feature Film
Winner: “Sunburn,” Serville Poblete Honorable Mention: “Man in Motion: The Rick Hansen Story,” Adrian Buitenhuis
Best Canadian Discovery
Winner: “Smudge the Blades,” Cody Lightning Honorable Mention: “The Black Box Is Orange,” Yuula Benivolski
Short Film Awards
Best Animated Short Film: “Into the Betaverse,” Varun Raman and Tom Hancock Best Animated Short Film, Honorable Mention: “Terminal,” Alexandre Siqueira Best Canadian Short Film: “Fight Kid,” Michael Del Monte Best Canadian Short Film, Honorable Mention: “Almost Pink,” Justine Prince Best International Short Film: “Mammalia,” Elia Kalogianni Best International Short Film, Honorable Mention: “The Spectacular Death of Prisca,” Kaelo Iyizoba
Other Awards
FIPRESCI Award: “Ancestors,” David Turpin NETPAC Award:”Thirteen in Gaza,” Hosam Abu Dan
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