La Bola Negra gives Netflix its first TIFF audience win
La Bola Negra has won the Toronto International Film Festival's People's Choice Award, the audience vote that often points to the Oscars race.
It is the first win for a Netflix film at Toronto, and the first win for a non-English-language film in 15 years, according to Variety. The runner-up was Being Heumann, directed by Siân Heder.
The winner is a 160-minute Spanish-language epic from Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, the Spanish duo known as Los Javis. The cast includes Penélope Cruz, Glenn Close and Guitarricadelafuente, and Pedro Almodóvar's El Deseo is among the co-producers.
The story follows three queer men at three points in Spanish history. It draws on Federico García Lorca's unfinished play and Alberto Conejero's play La piedra oscura, and is set in 1932, 1937 and 2017. Netflix describes it as a bold, passionate epic in which desire, pain and inheritance connect the lives of three men from the 1930s to modern-day Spain.
Toronto audiences chose well for Oscar watchers. Of the past 16 People's Choice winners, 14 went on to earn a Best Picture nomination, the Academy's top prize. Four went on to win it: The King's Speech, 12 Years a Slave, Green Book and Nomadland.
That record explains why the prize matters to Netflix, which has never won Best Picture. Alfonso Cuarón's Roma earned 10 Oscar nominations in 2018. Cuarón won for directing and cinematography, and the film won international feature, the Academy's award for non-English-language films, for Mexico. It lost Best Picture to Green Book.
Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog led the field with 12 nominations in 2021, and Campion won as director. It lost Best Picture to CODA from Apple, the first win for a film from a streaming service. Netflix's All Quiet on the Western Front earned seven BAFTAs and four Oscars in 2022 and lost Best Picture to Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Only one film has ever moved from an international feature win to Best Picture: South Korea's Parasite. Last season, Netflix's Emilia Pérez entered the 97th Oscars with 13 nominations, the most ever for a non-English-language film. The campaign faltered after Netflix removed lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón from its awards advertising when offensive social media posts resurfaced.
Los Javis arrive in Toronto with festival form. They shared the directing prize at Cannes with Pawel Pawlikowski, director of Fatherland. La Bola Negra has also been selected as Spain's entry in the international feature Oscar category.
For viewers, this means a cinema wait before streaming. La Bola Negra opens in theatres in New York and Los Angeles on 16 Oct. before expanding to additional theatres, according to Netflix Tudum. It reaches Netflix on 2 Dec., a 47-day cinema-only period described as the longest in Netflix history.
Cruz is set for a busy season. She has three films in the Oscar race: Bunker, La Bola Negra and The Invite.
