TIFF's People's Choice Award is supposed to predict the Oscars. Here's how that works

The Toronto International Film Festival has a reputation — and not just for its red carpet looks.

To those in the know, especially for those with an Oscars betting pool, TIFF has a different feather in its cap. Ostensibly, its top prize — the attendee-voted People's Choice Award (PCA) — is among the most reliable predictors for best picture nominees at the Oscars. So much so that the festival itself prides itself as an "Oscars bellwether" on its own website.

But how earned is that reputation, really? Well, there's a reason studios and audiences should care about TIFF's PCA winner — not to mention the festival itself, whose very future might depend on its continued ability to pick Academy Awards contenders.

For Oscar-obsessives and TIFF tastemakers alike, we crunched the numbers: here's your answer.

Established shortly after the festival came into being in 1976, the PCA wasn't initially thought of as a best-picture prognosticator — though the second winner, Best Boy, did go on to win best documentary at the Oscars.

But it was just two years later that everything changed. That's when British sports film Chariots of Fire caught Toronto audiences' attention; a foreign film and feature debut by a then-unknown director, Chariots of Fire was more or less ignored at Cannes and ineligible for best picture at the Golden Globes.

That made it an Oscars dark horse all through the awards season, going into the 1982 Academy Awards the clear second fiddle to Warren Beatty's political epic frontrunner Reds. Chariots' eventual win there is often pointed to as among the biggest upsets in the ceremony's history — though the populist, tearjerker appeal the movie offered was first discovered and cemented at TIFF, the "people's festival."

1983's PCA winner The Big Chill and 1984's Places in the Heart then helped calcify the "Oscars bellwether" connection: both films went on to earn best picture nominations. 1985's PCA champion The Official Story was awarded best foreign language film the following year, and TIFF's 1986 pick The Decline of the American Empire — according to the festival, one of only four Canadian films to win — was nominated in the same category.

But what followed was decades of close calls and a doubtful connection. Between 1985 and 2005 only a handful of PCA winners were nominated for best picture (Shine, Life is Beautiful, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and 2000's best picture winner American Beauty).

Shortly after is when things truly began to change. A stunning run of success began in 2008, when Slumdog Millionaire was so universally beloved by festival-goers it started annoying critics. Speaking to radio show Chatter that Matters, TIFF head Cameron Bailey explained that that film was initially slated for a straight-to-DVD release — an "orphan" of a movie that its studio believed was far too niche for wide audiences.

"How wrong they were," he said; the movie ended up winning eight Oscars, including best picture. "Everybody wanted to see Slumdog Millionaire. But you only know that when you show it to an audience en masse."

From there to 2023 stretched a near-unbroken string of best picture contenders: including festival standouts like Precious, Room and Green Book. Only one PCA winner (2011's Where Do We Go Now?) broke the streak. The following year, TIFF winner Silver Linings was nominated for best picture. The year after, 12 Years a Slave became the fifth PCA honouree to win best picture at the Oscars.

In all, there are now 22 PCA films subsequently nominated for best picture — seven of which went on to win. More than two thirds were from 2008 and after, with five of those going on to win best picture.

As to why there seems to be such a strong connection, the reasons come both from TIFF and the Oscars themselves. In 2009, the Academy increased their best picture shortlist from five to 10, and then briefly to a sliding scale of up to 10 picks. That significantly widened the field, which allowed more chances for TIFF to get it right.

But it is also partially because of what type of festival TIFF is.

Unlike festivals like Cannes — which decides its top prize by a jury of industry insiders — the PCA is just that: a choice by the people. And judged as it is by what the everyday person enjoys, their picks have been better predictors of a given film's performance come release day; TIFF's PCA winners have historically out-earned Cannes prestigious Palme d'Or winners at the box office by a factor of four to one.

"TIFF really is in a league of its own. It's something that they've owned for quite some time," Variety's Chief awards editor Clayton Davis said, referring to the buzz PCA winners — sometimes having already premiered at other festivals — can begin generating in Toronto.

That gives studios and awards campaigners guidance on whether they have a winning title, and where to focus their resources.

"I'm looking at something like Damien Chazelle's La La Land, Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmens," he said.

"These movies started off at Toronto, and then really just go through the season in a blaze of glory."

But all that gold makes for a particularly odd situation for last year's top winner, The Life of Chuck. Though the crowd-pleasing, feel-good Stephen King adaptation had strong word of mouth (and even a requisite dance scene) it hasn't parlayed that into widespread popularity — at least yet.

WATCH | What TIFF's People's Choice Award means to actors:

Chiwetel Ejiofor loves how invested people are in seeing films at TIFF. 'It's always great to be here,' he told CBC News at the red carpet premiere of Eleanor The Great. Ejiofor's film, The Life of Chuck, won TIFF's People's Choice Award in 2024.

It is somewhat a victim of its own success. Though a Toronto world premiere — which has been a leg-up for PCA hopefuls — it didn't have a distributor at the time, which tripped up Life of Chuck's ability to translate that win into wider popularity. It was only acquired by indie studio Neon after winning PCA.

And, as reported by the L.A. Times, without the necessary funds or time to set up a late-in-the-year marketing and awards campaign, they opted for a limited release in early 2025.

That's made Life of Chuck the first PCA in over a decade to not head to the Academy Awards. It is still eligible for the 2026 ceremony, though if it were nominated it would become the first PCA winner ever to gain a best picture nomination two years removed from its PCA win.

Doing so, Davis said, would be nearly as advantageous for TIFF as it would be for Chuck. A film festival's survival depends on it serving some use to distributors, he said, given the fact they only shop their films to a certain number of cities ahead of wide releases.

That makes TIFF's reputation as an awards decider a hot commodity — a reputation that is still the driving force behind luring studios to Toronto.

"They also go with where the press is going to be. And the press still sees TIFF as a vital indicator for Oscars season," he said. "TIFF has the backing, has the support. Right now, it's fighting like any other festival to show that it's still worth bringing your film here, to be seen in front of the largest crowd possible— that also will include Oscar voters among them."