After eleven whirlwind days of premieres, red carpets, and cinematic buzz in downtown Toronto, the 50th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) wrapped up on September 14, 2025, with a morning awards ceremony that set the tone for the upcoming awards season. The star of the show? Chloé Zhao’s emotionally charged drama, Hamnet, which clinched the coveted People’s Choice Award—an honor that has become a reliable harbinger for Oscar success.
It’s not every year a filmmaker takes home the People’s Choice Award twice, but Zhao did just that. According to IndieWire, she became the first director to win the prize twice, following her 2020 victory with Nomadland, which later captured the Best Picture Oscar. This year, Hamnet—a historical drama co-written, co-edited, and directed by Zhao—stood out from a crowded field, drawing deeply emotional reactions at both the Telluride Film Festival and TIFF.
Starring Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as Agnes Shakespeare, Hamnet is adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed 2020 novel. The film delves into the Bard’s marriage and the devastating loss of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet, exploring how grief may have inspired Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Hamlet. As Deadline notes, the film’s resonance with audiences was palpable, with many moved by its portrayal of loss and creativity.
The People’s Choice Award is no ordinary festival trophy. Since 1978, TIFF audiences have selected the winner, and their collective taste has proven remarkably prescient. As Next Best Picture points out, twelve of the last fifteen winners have gone on to receive Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, with four—The King’s Speech, 12 Years a Slave, Green Book, and Nomadland—taking home the top Oscar. In fact, in years when the Best Picture nominee pool expanded, at least one of the top three TIFF finishers almost always landed an Oscar nod.
Last year, the streak wobbled when Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck won the award but wasn’t released until the following summer, making its Oscar eligibility a point of debate. But with Hamnet set for a limited theatrical release by Focus Features on November 27 and a wide release starting December 12, 2025, industry insiders are already pegging Zhao and her stars as major contenders for the next Academy Awards.
The buzz around Hamnet was evident from its first screenings. According to The Associated Press, audiences at both Telluride and Toronto responded with tears and standing ovations, underscoring the film’s emotional impact. The story’s universal themes of love, loss, and artistic inspiration struck a chord, with many critics lauding Zhao’s deft touch and the stellar performances from Mescal and Buckley.
The competition for the People’s Choice Award was fierce. The first runner-up was Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, a Netflix-backed reimagining of the classic tale, and the second runner-up was Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, also from Netflix. Both films generated their own share of buzz, but it was Hamnet that ultimately captured the hearts of festivalgoers.
This year’s TIFF also saw the debut of the International People’s Choice Award, reflecting the festival’s increasingly global scope. Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice took home the inaugural prize, while Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value and Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound were named runners-up. The expansion of audience-voted awards to include international films underscores TIFF’s commitment to celebrating cinema from around the world.
Other notable audience awards included the People’s Choice Documentary Award, which went to Barry Avrich’s The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue. The film, which chronicles a daring cross-border rescue, edged out Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert and Nick Davis’s You Had to Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution… The Midnight Madness Award, known for spotlighting genre-bending and offbeat fare, was awarded to Matt Johnson’s Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, with Curry Barker’s Obsession and Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious as runners-up.
Beyond the audience awards, TIFF handed out a slew of juried prizes. Valentyn Vasyanovych’s To the Victory! claimed the Platform Award, while Zacharias Kunuk’s Wrong Husband was named Best Canadian Feature Film. The Best Canadian Discovery Award went to Sophy Romvari’s Blue Heron, highlighting the festival’s ongoing support for homegrown talent. Short film honors included Joecar Hanna’s Talk Me for Best International Short Film and Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski’s The Girl Who Cried Pearls for Best Canadian Short Film, with Agnès Patron’s To the Woods nabbing the Best Animated Short Film prize.
TIFF’s NETPAC Award, recognizing excellence in Asian cinema, was awarded to Jitank Singh Gurjar’s In Search of the Sky, while the International Critics’ Prize (FIPRESCI) went to Lucía Aleñar Iglesias’s Forastera. These accolades, though sometimes overshadowed by the People’s Choice Award, often signal future breakout successes on the international festival circuit.
For Chloé Zhao, the journey from indie darling to two-time TIFF People’s Choice Award winner is nothing short of remarkable. Her earlier win with Nomadland was followed by Oscar glory, and many are now wondering if lightning will strike twice. As festival director Cameron Bailey observed in a statement reported by Deadline, “The People’s Choice Award is a testament to a film’s power to connect with audiences. This year, Hamnet did just that.”
With awards season still in its early days, the TIFF results are already shaping the narrative. Will Hamnet follow in the footsteps of past winners and clinch Oscar gold? For now, the emotional resonance and critical acclaim surrounding Zhao’s latest film suggest it’s a strong contender—one with both the pedigree and the popular support to go the distance.
As the festival lights dim and Toronto’s theaters return to their regular programming, the echoes of Hamnet’s triumph linger, setting the stage for what promises to be an exciting race to the Academy Awards.
