Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Hamnet has won this year’s people’s choice award at the Toronto film festival.

The acclaimed drama, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning novel, stars Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal and tells a fictionalised account of William Shakespeare and wife Agnes as they grieve for their young son.

The award has come to suggest future Oscar success, with every recipient from 2011 to 2023 scoring either a best picture nomination or a win. Last year’s winner was Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck, starring Tom Hiddleston. The film later struggled at the box office upon release this summer. In a review for Vanity Fair, Richard Lawson called it a “disappointment” and added: “I don’t imagine a best picture nomination is in the offing.”

Hamnet premiered at the Telluride film festival to positive reviews and will be released later this year. It marks Zhao’s second people’s choice award after Nomadland in 2020.

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and Rian Johnson’s whodunnit sequel Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery were named runners-up.

For the first time, the festival introduced an international people’s choice award, which was won by Park Chan-wook’s darkly comedic thriller No Other Choice.

Controversial documentary The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue won the people’s choice award for documentary. The film, which tells the story of an Israeli general and the fallout from 7 October 2023, led to protests in the city and had been briefly removed from the schedule for “important safety, legal and programming concerns” before it was added back. In a mixed review for the Hollywood Reporter, Daniel Fienberg called it “undeniably gripping” but “oversimplified” with some “disingenuous film-making choices”.

The Toronto winners come after Jim Jarmusch’s family comedy Father Mother Sister Brother picked up the top award at the Venice film festival. The film stars Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver and Charlotte Rampling.

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Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, rejected the idea that far-left rhetoric led to conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing, defending her right to refer to President Donald Trump as “wannabe Hitler.”

Kirk’s death
 has sparked a nationwide conversation about political violence, particularly whether referring to one’s opposition as “fascist” or “Hitler” encourages unstable radicals to target them in lone wolf attacks. According to law enforcement reports, bullet casings found near where Kirk was killed were inscribed with anti-fascist messages.

Since the July 2024 assassination attempt on Trump, Republicans have accused members of the media and Democratic opponents of fueling violence by repeatedly comparing him to the Nazi leader.

Crockett, however, argued during her Friday appearance on the “The Breakfast Club” that it is actually Trump who has fostered a culture of political violence. While she denounced political violence, she also condemned Republicans for “presuming that [the assassin] is somebody that came from our side of the aisle.”

“Even if it came from someone on our side of the aisle, let’s assume the worst, OK, so let’s talk about it,” she said. “Let’s talk about what ‘radicalized’ him.”

She went on to point the finger at Trump. 

“So, we’ve got to talk about like what it means when you’re running for president, or you’re running for one of these higher offices, and you go out there and you talk about beating people up, you go out there and you say things like, ‘I could shoot somebody in the middle of the street in New York and I could still win,'” she said. 

“We got to talk about, like that, that is next level,” she said. “Me disagreeing with you, me calling you, you know, ‘wannabe Hitler,’ all those things are like, not necessarily saying, ‘Go out and hurt somebody.’ But when you’re literally telling people at rallies, ‘Yeah, beat them up’ and that kind of stuff, you are promoting a culture of violence.”

This is an excerpt from an article by Fox News’ Alexander Hall