Steven Spielberg’s ‘Fabermans’ wins Toronto Film Festival Audience Award

Steven Spielberg’s coming-of-age autobiographical drama “The Fabermans” won the Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) top award, the People’s Choice Award, cementing its early status as an Academy Award front-runner.

Toronto’s Audience Awards were announced Sunday as North America’s largest film festival wrapped up its 47th and first full-scale gathering in three years.

The return of TIFF audiences brings many anticipated world premieres including The Woman King led by Viola Davis, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery by Rian Johnson and Bros by Billy Eichner.

Toronto’s Audience Awards, voted by festival audiences, are a harbinger of much-anticipated awards season to come.

For the past 10 years, the TIFF winner has been nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards every year — and won frequently.

Last year, Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast won at a much-reduced-mix Toronto International Film Festival.

The year before, Zhao Wei’s “Nomads” won the TIFF before winning the Academy Award.

Other past winners include 12 Years a Slave, La La Land and Green Book.

This year, few movies have been more anticipated than “Faberman,” Spielberg’s memory-laden film about his childhood.

In Universal’s Nov. 11 film, Michelle Williams and Paul Dano play parents, while newcomer Gabriel Rabell plays teenage Spielberg and Sammy Faberman .

The film received rave reviews after its premiere.

In a statement read by festival director Cameron Bailey, Spielberg said: “This is the most personal film I’ve ever made, and the warm reception from everyone in Toronto made my first visit to TIFF to me and It’s so close and personal to the entire Fabelman family.”

The runner-up for the award was Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking,” about women members of a Mennonite colony who come together to discuss years of sexual abuse.

Second place went to Johnson’s “Glass Onion,” the director’s mysterious sequel for Netflix.