Overview

• TIFF announced the win on Sunday after public voting by festival attendees on the festival’s website.
• Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein finished second, with Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery in third.
• The victory makes Zhao the first director to claim the People’s Choice Award twice, following Nomadland in 2020.
• Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, the film stars Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal as Agnes and William Shakespeare.
• TIFF also awarded Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice the first International People’s Choice Award and gave the documentary prize to Barry Avrich’s The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue after the film’s brief withdrawal and reinstatement.