Spanish queer drama La Bola Negra has taken home this year’s People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), one of the most influential awards in the film industry. The film, directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (collectively known as Los Javis), spans three decades—1932, 1937, and 2017—and follows the lives of interconnected gay men. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where it shared the best director award with Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland. Critics praised the film, with The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw calling it “handsomely produced, lovingly detailed and confidently constructed.” Netflix acquired the film after a competitive bidding war and will release it in theaters on October 16, with a streaming debut on December 2. The People's Choice Award at TIFF is voted on by festival attendees and has become a strong indicator of Oscar success. Since 2012, all but one of the winners have received best-picture nominations at the Academy Awards. The exception was 2024’s The Life of Chuck, a Stephen King adaptation directed by Mike Flanagan. Last year’s winner, Hamnet by Chloé Zhao, earned eight Oscar nominations, including a win for best actress Jessie Buckley. This year’s runners-up in the People's Choice category were I Play Rocky, a biopic about Sylvester Stallone, and Being Heumann, a film about disability activism. For the second consecutive year, TIFF also awarded an international People's Choice Award, with the British 1980s-set AIDS drama Elsinore taking the prize. Last year’s international winner was No Other Choice, a darkly comedic thriller by South Korean director Park Chan-wook. The Toronto winners come on the heels of other major festival wins. May el-Toukhy’s suspense drama Woman Unknown won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, while Cristian Mungiu’s family drama Fjord took the Palme d’Or at Cannes. In the documentary category, Darlene Love: I Know Where I've Been won TIFF’s People's Choice Award, offering an intimate look at the life of 85-year-old singer Darlene Love. Meanwhile, the Midnight Madness section’s audience award went to Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney, a quirky documentary by Matthew Rankin about the former Canadian prime minister.