Toronto: ‘La Bola Negra’ Wins Audience Award

Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra picked up the top People’s Choice honor Sunday at the Toronto Film Festival as its 2026 edition wrapped.

Getting wind behind its award season sails, the sweeping Spanish-language epic that Netflix acquired out of the Cannes Film Festival for an awards season push picked up the top audience award. La Bola Negra, which recounts the story of three generations of queer men whose lives are connected through love and loss, was written (with Alberto Conejero), directed and produced by Los Javis, the creative name for the Spanish duo of Calvo and Ambrossi.

La Bola Negra became the subject of a competitive bidding war following its world premiere in Cannes, where Los Javis were awarded the fest’s best director prize for the film in a tie with Paweł Pawlikowski for Fatherland.

The first runner-up for the top audience prize was Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, while the second runner-up was Sian Heder’s Being Heumann, which opened TIFF on Sept. 10.

The audience award for best Midnight Madness title at TIFF went to Matthew Rankin’s Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney, from the National Film Board of Canada. The first runner-up is The Spiral, and the second runner-up is Arrested Memory.

Elsewhere, the People’s Choice award for best international film went to Simon Stone’s Elsinore, while Possible Love was the first runner-up, followed by The Assassins as the second runner-up.

And the People’s Choice award for best documentary went to Barry Avrich’s Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been, about the musical icon Darlene Love. The first runner-up in the category is Black Sunflowers, and the second runner-up is The Ultra Runner.

The People’s Choice awards are voted on by TIFF attendees, and in all, 12 audience and juried awards were to be handed out on Sunday morning in Toronto after 294 films from 70 countries screened at the festival over 11 days. To prevent festgoers from voting more than once for the same film, TIFF matches email addresses to ticket-buyer information, and verifies vote origin against IP addresses.

While not voting for the same film more than once, TIFF patrons can vote for as many different films as they want, but have to have bought a ticket to an individual film they vote for.

As in recent years, TIFF’s 2026 edition as an award season launchpad was overshadowed by Venice and Cannes, where the most highly anticipated Oscar-contending films increasingly get first looks. That’s as Toronto, where celebrities are in town simply to attend fest premieres, continues to host no official press conferences to help market films ahead of the awards season and has no official film competition.

As Hollywood contracts and the major studios have begun to shun the film festival circuit, celebrities in indie films made red carpet appearances in Toronto this year and took selfies with fans, but without the glitz and glamour as on the Croisette and the Lido.