Another major festival award of awards season was handed out this morning. However, this year’s award has a unique twist. Chloe Zhao’s latest film Hamnet won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Additionally, Park Chan-wook’s latest film No Other Choice won the very first People’s Choice International Award. What does this mean for both of these films’ Oscar chances? Here is a deep dive analysis on the winners of the award and whether we can predict if both have a great shot to get into the race or if it’s an award we should not focus on for this season.

I will start with Hamnet. This film long before the Toronto International Film Festival this year was expected to be a contender in this year’s awards and was said to be a priority for Focus Features. Zhao had previously won the People’s Choice Award in 2020 for Nomadland, which ultimately won Best Picture at the Oscars that year. Considering this morning’s win, will Zhao have a second Oscar coming her way? Considering historical data, I am banking more on the shot Hamnet gets nominated for Best Picture than actually winning it.

TIFF People’s Choice Award Winner	Oscar Best Picture Win	Oscar Best Picture Nomination
Tsotsi	No	No
Bella	No	No
Eastern Promises	No	No
Slumdog Millionaire	Yes	Yes
Precious	No	Yes
The King’s Speech	Yes	Yes
Where Do We Go Now?	No	No
Silver Linings Playbook	No	Yes
12 Years A Slave	Yes	Yes
The Imitation Game	No	Yes
Room	No	Yes
La La Land	No	Yes
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri	No	Yes
Green Book	Yes	Yes
Jojo Rabbit	No	Yes
Nomadland	Yes	Yes
Belfast	No	Yes
The Fabelmans	No	Yes
American Fiction	No	Yes
The Life of Chuck	No	No

As you can see from the 20 year sample list above, 15 of the 20 previous People’s Choice Award winners, which is 75%, have gone on to be nominated for Best Picture. Only 5 of those 15 (Slumdog Millionaire, The King’s Speech, 12 Years a Slave, Green Book, and Nomadland) have gone all the way and won Best Picture, which means only 25% of the People’s Choice Award winners in the past 20 years have won Best Picture and only 33.3% of the Golden Lion winners that were nominated for Best Picture ended up winning. The data here paints a very optimistic picture of it getting nominated, but odds are significantly lower on it winning. Ironically, Zhao’s last film Nomadland was the most recent winner of the People’s Choice Award that won Best Picture. However, is data that paints a different picture for why I felt Nomadland was the clear frontrunner that year.

Oscar Best Picture Winner	TIFF People’s Choice Award Winner	TIFF Final Three	Venice Golden Lion Winner	Venice Premiere
Crash	No	No	No	No
The Departed	No	No	No	No
No Country for Old Men	No	No	No	No
Slumdog Millionaire	Yes	Yes	No	No
The Hurt Locker	No	No	No	No
The King’s Speech	Yes	Yes	No	No
The Artist	No	No	No	No
Argo	No	Yes	No	No
12 Years A Slave	Yes	Yes	No	No
Birdman	No	No	No	Yes
Spotlight	No	Yes	No	Yes
Moonlight	No	No	No	No
The Shape of Water	No	No	Yes	Yes
Green Book	Yes	Yes	No	No
Parasite	No	Yes	No	No
Nomadland	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
CODA	No	No	No	No
Everything Everywhere All at Once	No	No	No	No
Oppenheimer	No	No	No	No
Anora	No	Yes	No	No

As you can see from the table above, Nomadland was the only Best Picture winner in the past 20 years to win both the People’s Choice Award at Toronto International Film Festival and the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival. From a statistical standpoint, that is only 5% of the past 20 Best Picture winners. Outside of the festival wins, it did won huge precursor awards including the Golden Globe for Best Picture-Drama, the Producers Guild of America award, the Directors Guild of America award, and the Critics Choice award for Best Picture outside those two major film festivals. All of those wins combined for a historically unstoppable, uncontested frontrunner that season which once again shows how strong Fox Searchlight is in the Oscar campaign business. I cannot say the same for Focus Features, which is distributing Hamnet.

Focus Features has never won an Oscar for Best Picture throughout its studio history. They have been very close to winning over the years, notably 2005’s Brokeback Mountain as the most prevalent example, but have never stuck the landing. Unlike Searchlight which actively campaigns for its contenders they strongly believe in, Focus campaigns for nominations but has never been successful winning Best Picture. That reason alone is why I feel uncomfortable with Hamnet’s chances of winning Best Picture this season. It will be a strong contender, but I am not confident it can pull off the win.

Now we will move on to the winner of the People’s Choice International Award: No Other Choice. As stated earlier, this is the first year that Toronto gave out an International Award in addition to the People’s Choice Award. Considering that, there is not much historical data to go over on that front. However, No Other Choice was another contender that before festival season was expected to do well. It was close to winning the Golden Lion at Venice. Saying all of that, why do I feel it might have trouble cracking the Best Picture lineup?

Unfortunately, its distributor NEON has a lot of films on their plate this awards season. They have It Was Just An Accident, which won this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes, and Sentimental Value, which placed second both at Cannes and Toronto and the studio views as a very high contender for them. All three films will likely cancel each other’s chances given they are not just going for Best Picture, they are also going for the Best International Film Oscar as well. It will be a very difficult decision for NEON, who has proven to be one of the better campaigners over the years with Parasite and Anora winning Best Picture after winning the Palme’d Or and placing top three at Toronto. Considering all of that, I cannot confidently say with the lack of data of a new award and that the studio’s slate is very full that No Other Choice will be in the Best Picture lineup.

Saying all of that, how do I feel about today’s People’s Choice Award winners at Toronto winning Best Picture this year? Unfortunately for both, I do not believe either will be the ultimate frontrunner in this year’s race. I do anticipate Hamnet to be nominated considering the win but the studio’s poor campaign history gives me little confidence. With a different studio, I would feel better about predicting No Other Choice in the Best Picture lineup, but considering Neon’s slate and being ambiguous about priorities I am not confident in its chances. I do think both are films that will be talked about this awards season regardless.

Thank you all for reading this and please feel free to comment your thoughts! I look forwarding to interacting with you all this awards season and sharing with all of you how The Oscar Code can help determine what will win Best Picture long before the awards begin.