Hamnet wins top award at the Toronto film festival | Toronto film festival 2025

Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Hamnet has gained this yr’s individuals’s selection award on the Toronto movie pageant.The acclaimed drama, based mostly on Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning novel, stars Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal and tells a fictionalised account of William Shakespeare and spouse Agnes as they grieve for his or her younger son.The award has come to counsel future Oscar success with each recipient from 2011 to 2023 scoring both a greatest image nomination or a win. Final yr’s winner was Stephen King adaptation The Lifetime of Chuck, starring Tom Hiddleston. The movie later struggled on the field workplace upon launch this summer season. In a evaluation for Vainness Truthful, Richard Lawson referred to as it a “disappointment” and added: “I don’t think about a greatest image nomination is within the offing.”Hamnet premiered on the Telluride movie pageant to optimistic opinions and might be launched later this yr. It marks Zhao’s second individuals’s selection award after Nomadland in 2020.Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and Rian Johnson’s whodunnit sequel Wake Up Lifeless Man: A Knives Out Thriller had been named runners up.For the primary time, the pageant launched a world individuals’s selection award which was gained by Park Chan-wook’s darkly comedic thriller No Different Selection.Controversial documentary The Highway Between Us: The Final Rescue gained the individuals’s selection award for documentary. The movie, which tells the story of an Israeli common and the fallout from 7 October 2023, led to protests within the metropolis and had been briefly faraway from the schedule for “necessary security, authorized and programming considerations” earlier than it was re-added. In a blended evaluation for the Hollywood Reporter, Daniel Fienberg referred to as it “undeniably gripping” however “oversimplified” with some “disingenuous film-making selections”.The Toronto winners come after Jim Jarmusch’s household comedy Father Mom Sister Brother picked up the highest award on the Venice movie pageant. The movie stars Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver and Charlotte Rampling.