La Bola Negra wins Toronto film festival people’s choice award

Spanish queer drama La Bola Negra has won the main people’s choice award at this year’s Toronto film festival.

Set in 1932, 1937 and 2017, the film follows interconnected gay men. It premiered at this year’s Cannes film festival.

After a competitive bidding war following its May premiere, Netflix acquired the film’s US rights. It is scheduled for release later this year.

First foreign-language winner since 2011

La Bola Negra is the first foreign-language film to win the award since the 2011 Lebanese drama Where Do We Go Now?

In a prepared statement, directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi said the Toronto audience’s response was “the greatest gift we could receive”.

The award and other finalists

Toronto’s people’s choice award is often treated as a possible indicator of later Oscar success. Previous winners include Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, Nomadland, Slumdog Millionaire and The King’s Speech.

Last year’s winner, Chloé Zhao’s Shakespeare drama Hamnet, received eight Oscar nominations and won best actress for Jessie Buckley. This year’s runners-up were the Sylvester Stallone biopic I Play Rocky and disability activism drama Being Heumann.

For the second consecutive year, the festival also presented an international people’s choice award. The 2026 winner was British 1980s-set Aids drama Elsinore; last year’s award went to Park Chan-wook’s darkly comic thriller No Other Choice.

Other major festival-season winners included May el-Toukhy’s suspense drama Woman Unknown, which won Venice’s Golden Lion, and Cristian Mungiu’s family drama Fjord, which took Cannes’ Palme d’Or.