La Bola Negra wins TIFF people’s choice award

Spanish queer drama La Bola Negra has won the people’s choice award at the 2026 Toronto film festival, becoming the first foreign-language film to receive the honour since 2011.

Directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, the film is set across 1932, 1937 and 2017 and follows the lives of interconnected gay men.

La Bola Negra premiered at the Cannes film festival in May, where it received a four-star review from the Guardian. Following a competitive bidding war after its Cannes premiere, Netflix acquired the film’s rights, with its release scheduled for later this year.

In a prepared statement, Calvo and Ambrossi said connecting with audiences in Toronto was “the greatest gift we could receive”.

The Toronto people’s choice award has increasingly been regarded as a potential indicator of Oscar success. Previous winners include Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, Nomadland, Slumdog Millionaire and The King’s Speech.

Last year’s winner was Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, which received eight Oscar nominations and won the best actress award for Jessie Buckley.

This year’s runners-up were the Sylvester Stallone biopic I Play Rocky and disability activism drama Being Heumann.

The international people’s choice award was also presented for the second year, with the British 1980s-set Aids drama Elsinore named the 2026 winner. Last year, the award went to Park Chan-wook’s dark comedy thriller No Other Choice.

The Toronto awards follow May el-Toukhy’s suspense drama Woman Unknown winning the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival. At Cannes in May, Cristian Mungiu’s family drama Fjord won the Palme d’Or.