Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award: Documentaries

The Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award for Documentaries is an annual film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to the film rated as the year's most popular documentary film with festival audiences. ^[1] The award was first introduced in 2009; ^[2] prior to its introduction, documentary films were eligible for the Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award, with two documentaries having won that award and six having been named as runners-up.

After the award is announced, the festival offers a repeat screening of the winner at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on the final day of the festival.

Unlike the main People's Choice Award for feature films, however, the documentary award does not have a similar record of being a reliable predictor of Academy Award nominations.

Process

The voting process is the same as for the feature film People's Choice: at each documentary film screening, attendees are invited to vote for the film online, with voters' e-mail addresses cross-referenced against the ticket registrations to ensure that the vote cannot be manipulated by people who have not seen the film.

Winners

Year	Film	Director(s)	Ref
2009	The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls	Leanne Pooley	[3]
	Capitalism: A Love Story	Michael Moore
2010	Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie	Sturla Gunnarsson	[4]
	Nostalgia for the Light	Patricio Guzman
2011	The Island President	Jon Shenk	[5]
	First Position	Bess Kargman
	Pearl Jam 20	Cameron Crowe
2012	Artifact	Jared Leto	[6]
	Storm Surfers 3D	Christopher Nelius, Justin McMillan
	Revolution	Rob Stewart
2013	The Square (Al-Midan)	Jehane Noujaim	[7]
	Hi-Ho Mistahey!	Alanis Obomsawin
	Beyond the Edge	Leanne Pooley
2014	Beats of the Antonov	Hajooj Kuka	[8]
	Do I Sound Gay?	David Thorpe
	Seymour: An Introduction	Ethan Hawke
2015	Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom	Evgeny Afineevsky	[9]
	This Changes Everything	Avi Lewis
	Al Purdy Was Here	Brian D. Johnson
2016	I Am Not Your Negro	Raoul Peck	[10]
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail	Steve James
Before the Flood	Fisher Stevens
2017	Faces Places	Agnès Varda, JR	[11]
Long Time Running	Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier
Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!	Morgan Spurlock
2018	Free Solo	E. Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin	[12]
This Changes Everything	Tom Donahue
The Biggest Little Farm	John Chester
2019	The Cave	Feras Fayyad	[13]
I Am Not Alone	Garin Hovannisian
Dads	Bryce Dallas Howard
2020	Inconvenient Indian	Michelle Latimer	[14]
	No runners-up named due to the reduced lineup in light of the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto.
2021	The Rescue	Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin	[15]
Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over	Dave Wooley, David Heilbroner
Flee	Jonas Poher Rasmussen
2022	Black Ice	Hubert Davis	[16]
Maya and the Wave	Stephanie Johnes
752 Is Not a Number	Babak Payami
2023	Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe	Robert McCallum	[17]
Summer Qamp	Jen Markowitz
Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa	Lucy Walker
2024	The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal	Mike Downie	[18]
Will & Harper	Josh Greenbaum
Your Tomorrow	Ali Weinstein
2025	The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue	Barry Avrich	[19]
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert	Baz Luhrmann
You Had To Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution, Spread Love & Overalls, and Created a Community That Changed the World (In a Canadian Kind of Way)	Nick Davis

See also

• Hot Docs Audience Awards
• Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature

References

1. Walmsley, Katie (September 2009). "Oprah flick 'Precious' wins top award at Toronto". CNN . Retrieved June 8, 2010.
2. "TIFF lineup expands with horror, music". Telegraph-Journal , July 22, 2009.
3. Adam McDowell, "'Precious' awarded top prize at TIFF". Regina Leader-Post , September 21, 2009.
4. "The King's Speech is People's Choice; Incendies voted best Canadian picture". Vancouver Sun , September 20, 2010.
5. "Lebanese film wins TIFF's top prize; Starbuck is People's Choice runner-up". National Post , September 19, 2011.
6. "Silver Linings Playbook writes surprise TIFF ending". Toronto Star , September 17, 2012.
7. Bruce Kirkland, "Slave tops TIFF winners". Toronto Sun , September 16, 2013.
8. Bruce Kirkland, "Benedict Cumberbatch film takes audience prize at TIFF". Toronto Sun , September 15, 2014.
9. Jim Slotek, "TIFF 2015: 'Room' wins People's Choice Award". Winnipeg Free Press , September 20, 2015.
10. Chris Knight, "And the winner is ...; La La Land takes bellwether award". National Post , September 19, 2016.
11. Jeremy Kay (17 September 2017). "'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri' wins Toronto audience award". Screen Daily. In other key awards handed out on Sunday afternoon (17), Warwick Thornton's Sweet Country claimed the Toronto Platform Prize, while Joseph Kahn's Bodied won the Grolsch People's Choice Midnight Madness Award. Agnès Varda and JR's Faces Places took the Grolsch People's Choice Documentary Award.
12. "'Green Book' boosts awards season prospects with TIFF audience award win". Screen Daily , September 16, 2018.
13. Etan Vlessing, "Toronto: Taika Waititi's 'Jojo Rabbit' Wins Audience Award". The Hollywood Reporter , September 15, 2019.
14. Etan Vlessing, "Toronto: Chloe Zhao's 'Nomadland' Wins Audience Award". The Hollywood Reporter , September 20, 2020.
15. Steve Pond, "‘Belfast’ Wins Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award". TheWrap , September 18, 2021.
16. Christian Zilko, "‘The Fabelmans’ Wins TIFF 2022 People’s Choice Award". IndieWire , September 18, 2022.
17. Steve Pond, "‘American Fiction’ Wins Toronto Film Festival’s Audience Award". TheWrap , September 17, 2023.
18. Steve Pond, "‘The Life of Chuck’ Wins Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award". TheWrap , September 15, 2024.
19. Pete Hammond, "‘Hamnet’ Wins Oscar-Predictive Toronto Film Festival People’s Choice Award". Deadline Hollywood , September 14, 2025.