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Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s gay epic La Bola Negra (The Black Ball) 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 drama that Netflix acquired out of the Cannes Film Festival for an awards season push picked up the top audience award after also screening in Telluride. 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. Los Javis, in a statement, said of their win: “This is a deeply personal film, but it also carries a message about the importance and the necessity of expressing who you are. So, knowing that audiences have connected with it and made it their own is the greatest gift we could receive.”
The first runner-up for the top audience prize was Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, which follows the tumultuous production of the 1976 boxing film that won three Oscars, 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, from director Paolo Strippoli, and the second runner-up is Sabu’s Arrested Memory.
Elsewhere, the People’s Choice award for best international film went to Simon Stone’s Elsinore, which chronicles the final year in Scottish actor Ian Charleson’s life and stars Olivia Colman, Billie Piper and Johnny Flynn. Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love was the first runner-up, followed by The Assassins, by Hur Jin-ho, 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 James Marcus Haney’s Black Sunflowers, and the second runner-up is The Ultra Runner from director Mila Aung-Thwin.
The People’s Choice awards are voted on by TIFF attendees, and in all, 12 audience and juried awards were handed out 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.
Elsewhere, the competitive Platform prize went to director Theja Rio for Angh, set in a deserted Nagaland village in remote India and in the early 1960s, and the best Canadian feature film prize was picked up by Serville Poblete for Sunburn, a hang-out movie set in St. James Town, a high-rise community in Toronto.
“This is for everyone I grew up with, and all the dreams we had as kids. This film is for them,” Poblete said when accepting the prize. The best Canadian Discovery Award went to Cody Lightning for Smudge The Blades, an indigenous underdog hockey team drama.
An emotional Lightning dedicated his prize to his late mother, veteran filmmaker Georgina Lightning, who died a few weeks before the world premiere of his film in Toronto during its 2026 edition. “She died doing something she loved. She was filming when she was hit,” the director said, fighting back tears. “Winning this means so much. I don’t make films to win awards. I just tell stories. This one is for my mum.”
The NETPAC award, given to the best Asian or Pacific regions film from an emerging filmmaker, went to Palestinian director Hosam Abu Dan’s Thirteen in Gaza. “We are so proud that the voice from Gaza has reached you, and that through this film we were able to share with the world one human story among the many painful stories of Gaza,” the filmmaker said in a statement.
The FIPRESCI prize, awarded to the best first feature in select sidebars, went to David Turpin’s Ancestors, a debut feature set in a dreamlike 1980s London. And the best animated short film prize went to Into The Betaverse, from directors Varun Raman and Tom Hancock.
Also on the short film front, the best international short trophy was picked up by Mammalia, from director Elia Kalogianni, and the best Canadian short film prize went to Michael Del Monte for his MMA drama Fight Kid.
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 of the Croisette and the Lido.
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