“La Bola Negra,” the Spanish epic from directing duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday. It is the first Netflix release to take the festival’s top audience prize.
The film follows three gay men whose lives connect across 1932, 1937 and 2017. Known in Spain as Los Javis, the directors wrote it with playwright Alberto Conejero, drawing on an unfinished work by Federico García Lorca and Conejero’s play “La piedra oscura.” Guitarricadelafuente and Milo Quifes make their acting debuts alongside Penélope Cruz, Glenn Close and Lola Dueñas.
The win extends a run that began at Cannes in May, where the pair shared the best director prize with Paweł Pawlikowski and Netflix emerged from a bidding war with the rights. Spain then chose the film as its Oscar submission for best international feature over Pedro Almodóvar’s “Bitter Christmas.”
Toronto’s audience award carries weight in awards season. Since 2008, only two winners have failed to land a best picture nomination, and past recipients include “Nomadland,” “Green Book” and “12 Years a Slave.” “La Bola Negra” is also the first non-English-language winner in 15 years. Audiences vote on the prize, however, and no jury weighs in. The runners-up show how crowded the race is: Peter Farrelly’s “I Play Rocky” placed second and Siân Heder’s “Being Heumann” third, each from a director whose previous film won best picture.
Ambrossi credits Almodóvar, whose company El Deseo co-produced the film, as a model. He says Almodóvar backed the team throughout and that he could not imagine becoming a director without him as a reference.
Elsewhere at the closing awards, Theja Rio’s “Angh,” shot in Nagaland, India, won the Platform prize and gained automatic Oscar eligibility under new Academy rules. Simon Stone’s “Elsinore” took the International People’s Choice Award. The festival screened 294 films from 70 countries over 11 days.
“La Bola Negra” opens in Spain on September 25 and reaches North American theaters through Netflix on October 16. France follows on December 16.
