Entertainment News

Toronto: Spain's 'La Bola Negra' wins People's Choice; Naga film 'Angh' wins the Platform Prize

La Bola Negra, by Spanish directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on September 20, TheWrap reported. The drama, inspired by an unfinished Federico García Lorca play, premiered at Cannes, where the pair won best director, and was acquired by Netflix. It is the first non-English-language winner since 2011. I Play Rocky and Being Heumann were runners-up.

TheWrap said 16 of the last 18 People's Choice winners were nominated for best picture, and five won. Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love was runner-up for International People's Choice, won by Simon Stone's Elsinore.

Toronto's CP24 led with the Canadian prizes and the Platform Award, which went to Angh, by Theja Rio, about the last surviving chief of a Nagaland village and filmed mostly in Konyak.

“This one's for my mom.” — Cody Lightning, Best Canadian Discovery winner, via CP24

The Week in India said Angh, Rio's debut, was the only Indian film in the Platform competition. Under a new rule the prize gives it a direct route to Oscar eligibility, even though the Marathi film Gondhal is India's official entry.

How each outlet framed it

• TheWrap — the award as an Oscar bellwether.
• CP24 — Canadian winners and the new Platform route.
• The Week — an Indian film with two possible paths to the Oscars.