La Bola Negra, a queer period drama directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, won the Toronto International Film Festival People’s Choice Award. The film, set in 1932, 1937 and 2017 and following the lives of interconnected gay men, premiered at Cannes where Peter Bradshaw called it “handsomely produced, lovingly detailed and confidently constructed” in a four-star review. After a competitive bidding war following its May premiere, Netflix acquired the rights and will release the film later this year. In a prepared statement the directors said connecting with Toronto audiences was “the greatest gift we could receive.” La Bola Negra is the first foreign-language winner of the prize since 2011’s Lebanese drama Where Do We Go Now? Runners-up at TIFF were the Sylvester Stallone biopic I Play Rocky and the disability activism drama Being Heumann. The People’s Choice Award has a history of predicting Academy recognition, with past winners including Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, Nomadland, Slumdog Millionaire and The King’s Speech, and last year’s winner Hamnet earned eight Oscar nominations and one win for best actress Jessie Buckley.
