Toronto: 5 Things the Fest Told Us About the Oscar Race

The 51st Toronto International Film Festival came to a close on Sunday, and now it’s time to figure out what it told us about the nascent race to the Oscars.

1. La Bola Negra has emerged as a — perhaps the — principal challenger to The Odyssey

Netflix’s Spanish-language epic La Bola Negra has had quite a week. Its Canadian premiere elicited one of the fest’s longest-standing ovations on record last Tuesday. On Wednesday, Spain selected it as the nation’s best international feature Oscar entry. And on Sunday, it won the fest’s audience award, a first for a Netflix film.

One shouldn’t read too much into the significance of the audience award to the Oscar race — the last time a non-English-language film won this prize was 15 years ago when it went to Where Do We Go Now?, and the prize’s winner two years ago was The Life of Chuck, neither of which went on to receive a single Oscar nom. But the Toronto audience is thought to be a pretty close demographic facsimile to the Academy, and every other audience award winner of the past decade did go on to at least a best picture Oscar nom, so the win is certainly encouraging news for Los Javis and friends.

In fact, given that TIFF audiences also saw Searchlight’s Wild Horse Nine and A24’s Club Kid, two of the season’s other biggest awards hopefuls, and that those two films didn’t place in the top three for the audience award, I think that one has to regard La Bola Negra, at least for now, as the primary challenger to Universal’s The Odyssey in the best picture Oscar race.

And given that Academy members not infrequently end up breaking for a David (La Bola Negra cost less than $15 million) over a Goliath (The Odyssey was made on a $250 million budget) — see Shakespeare in Love v. Saving Private Ryan, The Hurt Locker v. Avatar, Parasite v. 1917, Everything Everywhere All at Once v. Top Gun: Maverick, etc. — the talent associated with The Odyssey may want to start being a little more visible.

2. I Play Rocky is a contender

TIFF’s policy regarding films that previously screened in Venice and/or Telluride — namely, not programming them in any of the fest’s marquee venues on the fest’s opening Thursday, Friday or Saturday — once again bit the festival in the ass. As a result of it, very few high-profile awards contenders screened on those dates, and the films that did screen, as world premieres, didn’t make much noise… with one notable exception.

The fest opened on Thursday with Apple’s Being Heumann and Neon’s The Housewife, both of which were warmy received (Being Heumann ended up placing third for the audience award). On Friday, A24’s Misty Green, a Hollywood satire written and directed by Chris Rock, generated strong notices, particularly for lead actress Rosalind Eleazar. And there was also a favorable response on Saturday to Amazon/MGM’s Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, an action-thriller led capably by Mahershala Ali.

But none of TIFF’s world premieres popped more than Amazon/MGM’s I Play Rocky on Saturday night. Peter Farrelly’s rousing drama about young Sylvester Stallone — played in a star-making and awards-friendly turn by Anthony Ippolito — and the making of Rocky was applauded throughout its first screening and then extensively after it ended.

As we learned eight years ago with Green Book, which also was unveiled at TIFF, Farrelly and his films are very polarizing. Critics don’t particularly like them (Rotten Tomatoes has Green Book at 77 percent and I Play Rocky at 82 percent), and neither does Film Twitter. But your average Toronto moviegoer certainly does (Green Book won the audience award and I Play Rocky finished second), which suggests your average Academy member might, too.

3. Do not underestimate Elsinore

The knock on Focus’ Elsinore is that, supposedly, it’s all about Andrew Scott’s tour-de-force performance, and the rest of the film is merely adequate. One can debate that (the film is still at a very respectable 88% on RT), but you know what? Even if that is the case, it might be enough for the film to still land among the 10 best picture Oscar nominees.

Why? Because Scott is in virtually every scene, and his work is so deeply affecting that most people leave the movie thinking about that, not minor shortcomings. That’s apparently what happened with TIFF moviegoers, who voted it the fest’s international audience award. (La Bola Negra was removed from the running for that one because it placed in the top three of the overall audience award.)

Since the expansion of the best picture Oscar category beyond five slots in 2009, there have been quite a few best picture nominees that were widely regarded as middling films highlighted by a standout leading performance — among them The Blind Side (65 percent on RT), The Help (75 percent on RT), Bohemian Rhapsody (60 percent on RT) and Elvis (77 percent on RT). I don’t see why Elsinore wouldn’t join that list.

Meanwhile, don’t overlook the fact that Netflix’s Possible Love, the latest masterpiece from Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong, finished second in the voting for the international audience award. The film is really well done (it’s at 100 percent on RT with more than 30 reviews currently factored into the equation), and it’s hard to imagine that it won’t wind up alongside La Bola Negra as a nominee for the best international feature Oscar.

4. Don’t expect any late-breaking acquisitions to shake up the race

It wasn’t that long ago that films came to TIFF without a buyer, played well, sold to a serious distributor, and wound up being a major player in the Oscar race — see: The Wrestler (2008), Still Alice (2014), The Wife (2017), etc. However, it doesn’t look like this year, the first in which the fest hosted a market, will add any entries to that list.

Almost all the films that came to the fest this year with hopes of landing a sale and a spot in the awards race flopped, including Prima Facie, an adaptation of the Broadway show for which Jodie Comer won a Tony, only now with Cynthia Erivo in the lead role (25 percent on RT); the Taron Egerton comedy Everybody Wants to F*ck Me (55 percent on RT); Closing Night, Cody Fern’s directorial debut starring Sarah Paulson in a juicy part (62 percent on RT); and Chase Infiniti’s first post-One Battle After Another vehicle The Julia Set (also 62 percent on RT).

The only narrative film of note that sold at the fest was Joshua Giuliano’s River (91 percent on RT), which came out of the Midnight Madness section and sparked a bidding war — just like Obsession did a year ago — and ultimately sold to Universal and Blumhouse for $10 million. It remains to be seen if it will be a factor in the awards race of this year or next or neither.

Meanwhile, the only narrative title that’s still on the table that distributors seem to regard as a potential awards player is Tim Blake Nelson’s The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd, starring Amanda Seyfried, though it’s generally regarded as too small to make much of a dent if acquired, and most distributors’ slates are too full for this season to justify them going after it.

5. Obsession is still lurking in the corner of the room while you sleep

Speaking of Obsession, TIFF and the film’s principal talent — writer/director/editor Curry Barker and star Inde Navarrette — took a well-deserved victory lap on the fest’s first Friday, celebrating the remarkable trajectory of the film since TIFF premiered it on Sept. 5, 2025.

During an installment of the TIFF Dialogues franchise, Barker and Navarrette spoke with Peter Kuplowsky, the lead programmer of TIFF’s Midnight Madness section, about how the film, which cost just $750,000, became the talk of the fest that night, sparking an overnight bidding war that resulted in Focus acquiring it for $15 million; releasing it in 2,615 theaters in North America on the weekend of May 15, during which it grossed $17 million; and then watching it exceed that amount for the next five weekends en route to a current total of $514 million in worldwide ticket sales.

Barker noted that he had never even left the United States prior to being invited to TIFF last year. Navarrette said she roomed with a fellow member of the film’s team while in town for last year’s screening. And now both — still just 26 and 25, respectively — are among the newest members of Hollywood’s A-list, and very serious contenders for Oscar nominations.