Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award: Midnight Madness

The Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award for Midnight Madness is an annual film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to the film rated as the year's most popular film in the festival's "Midnight Madness" stream of underground and cult films. ^[1] The award was first introduced in 2009. ^[2]

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.

Process

The voting process is the same as for the feature film People's Choice: at each Midnight Madness film screening, attendees are invited to "vote" for the film by leaving their ticket stubs in voting boxes outside the theatre after the show. ^[3]

Winners

Year	Film	Director(s)	Ref
2009	The Loved Ones	Sean Byrne	[4]
	Daybreakers	Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig
2010	Stake Land	Jim Mickle	[5]
	Fubar 2	Michael Dowse
2011	The Raid	Gareth Evans	[6]
	You're Next	Adam Wingard
	God Bless America	Bobcat Goldthwait
2012	Seven Psychopaths	Martin McDonagh	[7]
	The Bay	Barry Levinson
	John Dies at the End	Don Coscarelli
2013	Why Don't You Play in Hell?	Sion Sono	[8]
	Oculus	Mike Flanagan
	Witching and Bitching	Álex de la Iglesia
2014	What We Do in the Shadows	Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement	[9]
	Tusk	Kevin Smith
	Big Game	Jalmari Helander
2015	Hardcore Henry	Ilya Naishuller	[10]
	The Final Girls	Todd Strauss-Schulson
	Green Room	Jeremy Saulnier
2016	Free Fire	Ben Wheatley	[11]
The Autopsy of Jane Doe	André Øvredal
Raw	Julia Ducournau
2017	Bodied	Joseph Kahn	[12]
The Disaster Artist	James Franco
Brawl in Cell Block 99	S. Craig Zahler
2018	The Man Who Feels No Pain	Vasan Bala	[13]
Halloween	David Gordon Green
Assassination Nation	Sam Levinson
2019	The Platform	Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia	[14]
The Vast of Night	Andrew Patterson
Blood Quantum	Jeff Barnaby
2020	Shadow in the Cloud	Roseanne Liang	[15]
	No runners-up named due to the reduced lineup in light of the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto.
2021	Titane	Julia Ducournau	[16]
You Are Not My Mother	Kate Dolan
Dashcam	Rob Savage
2022	Weird: The Al Yankovic Story	Eric Appel	[17]
Pearl	Ti West
The Blackening	Tim Story
2023	Dicks: The Musical	Larry Charles	[18]
KILL	Nikhil Nagesh Bhat
Hell of a Summer	Finn Wolfhard, Billy Bryk
2024	The Substance	Coralie Fargeat	[19]
Dead Talents Society	John Hsu
Friendship	Andrew DeYoung
2025	Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie	Matt Johnson	[20]
Obsession	Curry Barker
The Furious	Kenji Tanigaki

See also

• Midnight film
• Underground film
• Cult film

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. "Choose wisely: At the Toronto International Film Festival, how do you ensure that the people have actually spoken?". The Globe and Mail , September 7, 2017.
4. Adam McDowell, "'Precious' awarded top prize at TIFF". Regina Leader-Post , September 21, 2009.
5. "The King's Speech is People's Choice; Incendies voted best Canadian picture". Vancouver Sun , September 20, 2010.
6. "Lebanese film wins TIFF's top prize; Starbuck is People's Choice runner-up". National Post , September 19, 2011.
7. "Silver Linings Playbook writes surprise TIFF ending". Toronto Star , September 17, 2012.
8. Bruce Kirkland, "Slave tops TIFF winners". Toronto Sun , September 16, 2013.
9. Bruce Kirkland, "Benedict Cumberbatch film takes audience prize at TIFF". Toronto Sun , September 15, 2014.
10. Jim Slotek, "TIFF 2015: 'Room' wins People's Choice Award". Winnipeg Free Press , September 20, 2015.
11. Chris Knight, "And the winner is ...; La La Land takes bellwether award". National Post , September 19, 2016.
12. 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.
13. "'Green Book' boosts awards season prospects with TIFF audience award win". Screen Daily , September 16, 2018.
14. Etan Vlessing, "Toronto: Taika Waititi's 'Jojo Rabbit' Wins Audience Award". The Hollywood Reporter , September 15, 2019.
15. Etan Vlessing, "Toronto: Chloe Zhao's 'Nomadland' Wins Audience Award". The Hollywood Reporter , September 20, 2020.
16. Steve Pond, "‘Belfast’ Wins Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award". TheWrap , September 18, 2021.
17. Christian Zilko, "‘The Fabelmans’ Wins TIFF 2022 People’s Choice Award". IndieWire , September 18, 2022.
18. Steve Pond, "‘American Fiction’ Wins Toronto Film Festival’s Audience Award". TheWrap , September 17, 2023.
19. Steve Pond, "‘The Life of Chuck’ Wins Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award". TheWrap , September 15, 2024.
20. Pete Hammond, "‘Hamnet’ Wins Oscar-Predictive Toronto Film Festival People’s Choice Award". Deadline Hollywood , September 14, 2025.