Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s Spanish-language epic La Bola Negra has won the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award, the festival’s top audience-voted prize, as TIFF wrapped its 51st edition on Sunday. The win marks a historic first for the award: La Bola Negra is the first non-English-language film to take the top prize since Where Do We Go Now? in 2011, and the first Netflix release ever to win the People’s Choice Award outright.
Directed by the duo known professionally as Los Javis, La Bola Negra follows three generations of queer men whose lives are connected across decades through love, pain and loss. The story unfolds across three timelines set in Spain in 1932, 1937 and 2017.
The film is partly inspired by Federico García Lorca’s unfinished work of the same name. Calvo and Ambrossi co-wrote the 159-minute screenplay with Alberto Conejero, also drawing on Conejero’s stage play La piedra oscura. The cast includes Guitarricadelafuente, making his acting debut as Sebastián, alongside Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, Milo Quifes, Lola Dueñas, Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close. Guitarricadelafuente also co-wrote and recorded the film’s original song “La nieve” with Raül Refree.
The film’s road to Toronto had already been notable. La Bola Negra premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, where it received a 16-minute standing ovation and saw Calvo and Ambrossi share the festival’s Best Director prize in a tie with Paweł Pawlikowski for Fatherland. Netflix acquired the film out of Cannes to mount an awards-season campaign, and it subsequently screened at the Telluride Film Festival before arriving in Toronto.
TIFF’s People’s Choice Award also carries significance heading into awards season. Over the past 15 years, all but two of the award’s winners have gone on to earn a Best Picture Oscar nomination, while Nomadland, 12 Years a Slave and Green Book subsequently won Best Picture. Last year’s winner, Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, also secured a Best Picture nomination.
La Bola Negra finished ahead of Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, which was the first runner-up, while Siân Heder’s Apple-backed Being Heumann finished as second runner-up.
Elsewhere at the festival, Theja Rio’s Angh won the Platform Award, TIFF’s juried prize for non-English-language films, which carries a CA$20,000 prize. Shot on 16mm in the jungles of Nagaland near the Indo-Burma border, the Naga-language film was recognized by a jury led by filmmaker Pablo Trapero. Under a new TIFF rule this year, the Platform Award winner is now directly eligible for the Best International Feature Oscar. David Turpin’s Ancestors won the FIPRESCI critics’ prize.
TIFF’s 2026 edition unfolded with less of the awards-season attention that traditionally surrounded the festival, as more early focus shifted toward Venice and Cannes. The festival does not hold an official competition or formal press conferences, while reduced studio presence across the festival circuit also shaped this year’s edition, with independent-film stars playing a larger role in red-carpet appearances and fan interactions.
With its People’s Choice Award win, La Bola Negra now enters the fall awards season with a significant audience prize behind it. The film also holds the distinction of being the first non-English-language winner of TIFF’s top audience award in more than a decade and the first Netflix release to claim the prize outright.
