While 2025 marked the 50th Anniversary of the Toronto International Film Festival, this year’s festival handed out only the 48th edition of its People’s Choice Awards. Its recipient is Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet. The Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal starrer beat out first runner-up, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, and second runner-up, Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.
Voted on by audience members since 1978, the award, for many, is considered a precursor to eventual Oscar success. The People’s Choice Award has gone to eventual Best Picture Academy Award winners, including Nomadland, Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, American Beauty, and 1981’s Chariots of Fire.
Many winners that didn’t earn Oscar gold did receive nominations. That list includes heavy-hitters American Fiction, The Fabelmans, Belfast, JoJo Rabbit, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Room, La La Land, The Imitation Game, Silver Linings Playbook, Precious, Life is Beautiful, Places in the Heart, and 1983’s The Bill Chill.
Last year’s winner, The Life of Chuck, took the festival by surprise. The film, written for the screen and directed by Mike Flanagan, didn’t have US distribution. Eventually acquired by Neon, the Stephen King adaptation got a theatrical release this past summer. It, along with Hamnet, will be eligible for this year’s ceremony.
Hamnet, a historical drama based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, marks writer/director Zhao’s second People’s Choice Award at TIFF. She won in 2020 for Nomadland, a film that earned her and star Frances McDormand Oscars.
Focus Features has set Hamnet for a limited Thanksgiving release before expanding wide on December 12.
