“Hamnet,” Chloé Zhao’s movie about Shakespeare’s household, has claimed the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition Individuals’s Selection Award, typically a predictor of Oscar success.
The win was introduced Sunday, together with a number of different pageant honorees. Runners-up for the Individuals’s Selection prize had been Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” and Rian Johnson’s “Wake Up Useless Man: A Knives Out Thriller.”
“Hamnet,” primarily based on a ebook by Maggie O’Farrell and screenplay by O’Farrell and Zhao, probes the concept that Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” was profoundly influenced by the loss of life of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet. Shakespeare’s spouse, Agnes (also referred to as Anne), is central to the story.
Zhao, who has helmed 5 movies, additionally directed “Nomadland,” winner of the 2020 Toronto Individuals’s Selection Award and three Academy Awards, together with greatest director, in 2021.
Final 12 months’s Individuals’s Selection winner in Toronto was Mike Flanagan’s movie “The Lifetime of Chuck,” which was publicly launched in summer season 2025, a timetable that some have stated might damage its Oscar possibilities.
The Individuals’s Selection Documentary Award went to “The Street Between Us: The Final Rescue,” a couple of hostage rescue mission undertaken by a retired Israel Protection Forces officer following the Hamas assaults in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. After withdrawing its preliminary invitation to the movie, directed by Toronto filmmaker (and former TIFF board member) Barry Avrich, the pageant subsequently rescheduled it following public uproar.
The Worldwide Individuals’s Selection Award went to “No Different Selection,” directed by Park Chan-wook of South Korea.
Among the many different winners had been:
Midnight Insanity Award (celebrating “the easiest and most weird in up to date style and shock cinema”): “Nirvanna the Band the Present the Film,” directed by Matt Johnson
Platform Award (spotlighting creative advantage and directorial imaginative and prescient): “To The Victory,” directed by Valentyn Vasyanovych
Canadian Function Movie: “Uiksaringitara (Unsuitable Husband),” directed by Zacharias Kunuk
Canadian Discovery: (celebrating rising administrators): “Blue Heron,” directed by Sophy Romvari
Worldwide Brief Movie: “Discuss Me,” directed by Joecar Hanna
Canadian Brief Movie: “The Woman Who Cried Pearls,” directed by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski
Animated Brief Movie: “To the Woods,” directed by Agnès Patron
NETPAC Award (specializing in movies made in Asia and the Pacific): “In Search of the Sky,” directed by Jitank Singh Gurjar
FIPRESCI Prize (by the Worldwide Federation of Movie Critics): “Forastera,” directed by Lucía Aleñar Iglesias
Workers author Mark Olsen contributed to this report.