Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet picked up the top People’s Choice honor Sunday at the Toronto Film Festival during a 50th edition in the shadow of Venice and Cannes.
The Nomadland director’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, a fictionalized account of Shakespeare and his wife as they fall in love, stars Paul Mescal as the Bard. The drama bowed in Telluride and had a Canadian premiere in Toronto.
The first runner-up was Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, an adaptation of the classic Mary Shelley novel that was shot mostly in Toronto, while the second runner-up was Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.
The win for Hamnet came as Hollywood’s awards season kicks into gear. In 2024, Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck nabbed the top People’s Choice honor, with Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez and Sean Baker’s Anora in runner-up positions.
The People’s Choice awards are voted on by TIFF attendees, and in all 14 audience and juried awards were handed out on Sunday morning in Toronto. To prevent festgoers 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.
More to come.