Spanish queer drama La Bola Negra has won this year’s people’s choice award at the Toronto film festival.
The film, which takes place in 1932, 1937 and 2017, focuses on the lives of interconnected gay men. It premiered at this year’s Cannes film festival with the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw calling it “handsomely produced, lovingly detailed and confidently constructed” in a four-star review.
After a competitive bidding war after its premiere in May, Netflix picked up the rights and the film will be released later this year.
In a prepared statement, directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi said that connecting with Toronto audiences in this way was “the greatest gift we could receive”.
It marks the first foreign language winner of the award since 2011’s Lebanese drama Where Do We Go Now?
The award has come to be used as a predictor of Oscar success with past best picture winners such as Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, Nomadland, Slumdog Millionaire and The King’s Speech all picking it up. Last year’s winner was Chloé Zhao’s Shakespeare drama Hamnet which was nominated for eight Oscars, winning one for best actress Jessie Buckley.
Sylvester Stallone biopic I Play Rocky and disability activism drama Being Heumann were named this year’s runners-up.
For the second year, the international people’s choice award was also handed out with British 80s-set Aids drama Elsinore named as the 2026 winner. Last year’s was given to Park Chan-wook’s darkly comedic thriller No Other Choice.
The Toronto winners come after May el-Toukhy’s suspense drama Woman Unknown won the Golden Lion award at the Venice film festival. At Cannes back in May, Cristian Mungiu’s family drama Fjord won the Palme d’Or.
